Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

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Radio 4. My customers My castaway this week is the actor Ray Winston, Nill by mouth, sexy beast Vincent,

the Sweeney, he's probably best known for totally authentic tough guy geezer parts, but in truth his work has far more range and nuance.

Encompassing rules as varied as Henry VIII, Magwitch in great expectations and the lead in Beowulf. Beyond the screen the man himself

almost seems to come from a bygone era when a fellow worth this salt always wore a dapper

three-piece suit and was handy with his fists. In his youth as a boxer he won 80 of his 88 fights and it seemed for a while at least that a whiff of menace had followed him out of the ring and onto the streets.

However, he says, I'm not like the geezers I play.

Loads of things can scare me in everyday life.

But you have to hide a bit and put on a front.

I cry at movies, I cry at scripts, I cried when West Ham got back into the

Premiership. I'm even frightened of spiders. Welcome Ray Winston. I'm wondering how you are as an

actor sitting in front of a microphone without a script. Just chatting about

yourself. Is that comfortable? It's comfortable when you're having a

conversation. It depends what the questions are and it depends who's asking them.

When you're in a situation of being asked questions, you get

deja vu like you've been asked the same question again. It's much more comfortable

when it's just a discussion. Right, let's do our best with that to then. What do you think people's biggest misconception about you is,

and by people I mean you're sort of viewing public?

I think the tough guy I think is probably what it is but that doesn't worry me because I kind of came to the

conclusion that if that's what the public think I am when I'm playing those characters

...