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 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a politician. Since entering the cabinet after Labour's

victory two years ago, she's become one of the best-known women in Britain. Her

straightforward manner has brought her political success and her courage in the face of illness

has earned her public admiration.

She herself confesses to being a slogger, the daughter of an alcoholic post office worker, she was the first in her family to go to university.

I don't believe in great revolutionary possibilities, she says.

I'm much more driven by results than ideology.

She is the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr. Marjorie

Mollum, whom it's impossible to call anything else but Mo. I mean, the Labour Party tried

to get you more formally addressed at one point that it didn't work work, did? They gave up. I can remember I was doing the

Dimbleby one question time and somebody said to me afterwards because he kept trying to call me

Marjorie and others on the panel called me Mo and they

thought there was an extra person on the panel and it caused terrible confusion.

And the doctor gets lost all the time really isn't?

It's well I don't think doctors are medical

doctors I'm a academic doctor you're a PhD yeah and it doesn't strike me as

necessary I would think the idea of being alone on a desert island must sound like bliss to you

doesn't it wonderful would be absolutely wonderful no phone no facts is I would

sit there and enjoy every moment I'd miss my husband John and his two children, each and Freddie, but I'm sure they'd find

a way to visit. Can I go next week, please?

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