Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I'm Krista 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 2006,

and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Music My castaway this week is a television star.

Fabulously rich and astonishingly successful.

He's the self-created hitman of one of the world's biggest franchises, pop idol.

He squashes the hopes and raises the aspirations of wannabees with a carefully blended mixture of arrogance, disdain and charm.

Born in the home counties, he was a washout at school,

but immediately did well in the record business that he joined at the age of 19.

Ten years later, he was driving a Porsche and living it up in

Fulham. Then he lost all that before starting the long climb back to his present success.

He produced a string of money-spinning recording artists and it was his experience in working

with new talent that gave him the idea for Pop Idol, a programme that's led to American pop idol and then today

to the X Factor. I have, he says, with the self-confidence that is his trademark, an instinct

for what the public want. And there are very few people who have it in my area. He is Simon Cowell.

Sounds a bit big-headed, isn't it?

So. How do you know, thoughheaded, isn't it? So.

How do you know, though, when you hear it?

I mean, do you know immediately?

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