Hello I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1988 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a man who's risen to the top of his profession at the age of 33. Such early success is made

even more surprising by the fact that the profession he's chosen is a difficult and a serious

one, making people laugh but from the time he came to

public attention at the Edinburgh Festival to such popular television programs as

not the nine o'clock news and Black adder he has managed with a mixture of

satire irony and expressive facial gestures to do just that. He is Rowan

Atkinson. Rowan it is a serious business being funny isn't it? Yes for a lot of the time

there are some very amusing moments as well but it is it is quite a. I find it increasingly easy to a certain extent to

to be relaxed about it. But do you nevertheless fear that you will wake up one

morning and simply not be funny anymore?

Well, five or six, five or six years ago, I think I did use to fear that, but increasingly I don't.

Maybe I'm mad. I mean maybe my optimism is totally

unjustified. But increasingly I suppose I've come to realize that perhaps I can do it and can

do things and I think in terms of the you know the range of

work that I feel as though I might be capable of I feel now that I've only

attempted about 40% of what I feel as though I could do. I'm not saying I

will ever get the opportunities to explore the other 60% but that's what I genuinely feel.

So... What you're saying is you've become a professional

maybe I have yes I mean maybe I realize now that I couldn't give it up and become an

electrical engineer and I won't be retiring early.

...