Hello, I'm Krestey 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 1996, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My cast away this week is a politician, the son of a Scottish Calvinist minister, he appears to many to survive on a mixture

of intellectual strength and natural self-discipline.

He went to Edinburgh University at the age of 16, its youngest student for 50 years, and entered Parliament in 1983.

Rapidly promoted, he moved to the front benches within four years and was seen as a potential leader of his party.

But when the leadership election came, he stood aside.

He's never held high office and he's never married,

but has voiced ambitions to do both.

He's the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

Gordon, holding high office is presumably top of your agenda as we enter the last 12 possible

months of this government's life?

I think I would come back from a desert island for an election and for government.

We've waited a long time and I think we work as a team.

We've been working as a team for many years to get this result. We've had to make huge

changes. I was one of the people advocating big changes. You say to get this result, does that mean

you think it's only a matter of time? Now let have the election and you're in well perhaps I

should say the result we want I take nothing for granted and I don't think anybody's

complacent but I think there is a tide in politics and I think people see the need for

change and I would like to be part of that

four years ago of course. In fact you were saying that four years ago and it

didn't happen. I think more so now. People's thoughts you know now are about

...