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 1994, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a politician, the son of a Nottingham-Shirmin minor he told his history master at grammar school

that he would be an MP before he was 30. He was right. He won a Midland seat

for the Conservatives in 1970.

Admired for his quick brain and combative style,

his brand of toriism kept him from high office

under Margaret Thatcher for some time.

By 1985, however, he battled his way into the cabinet and since then

he's held six senior posts. Having no regard for the reputations of others it's

been said he has made an immense one of his own at the moment he's

the Chancellor of the Exchequer but many predict he'll have the top job before long

he is Kenneth Clark. Your image Ken Clark is that of aiser, a man who's unafraid of the heat in any political

kitchen. Does that come naturally to you?

Well, I don't think so. It's always rather surprised me that I've acquired that I I think in politics you get a

cut-out cardboard image after a bit people who write about politics has got to fit you in into

this sort of great soap opera that it's become.

And if you'd ask me when I started in politics

that I was going to regard it as combative,

if you just described me, or robust as I've often described,

I would have been very, very surprise.

You seem to relish, nevertheless, getting out there and being competitive.

...