Hello I'm Kesti 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 at the moment he's leader of his party

but by next summer he might have become leader of his country if he doesn't become

prime minister it will be a disaster for his supporters. But for him, the public school

boy who might have become an actor but became a successful lawyer instead, failure in politics

while not welcome would by no means be terminal.

He may be dedicated to reform, his eyes may be set unswervingly on victory, but he says,

having a hinterland in which there are things that matter to you every bit as much is desperately important.

He is the leader of Her Majesty's opposition, Tony Blair.

What is it about this hinterland, Mr Blair, that makes it such a safety net?

I don't know that it's a safety net, but I think it's important that you're in order

political obsessive. I mean, politics is my life. I'm dedicated to the

the aims I've set myself in politics but it's you know it's not all of life and

my family my friends and other interests are also important.

But you have a very young family, what, they're 12, 9, 8.

They're 12, 10 and 8, and they're shortly to become 13, 11 and 9, and it's been difficult combining politics and the family.

That's the point really isn't it that the leadership if you like came a bit too

early for you because they're still at those ages where they require a lot of time and energy.

Do you feel guilty about not being able to supply enough of that?

I feel worried about it.

It's a decision once I decided to go for the leadership that inevitably meant that

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