Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King.

He's been in charge during a period of unprecedented global financial turmoil, yet under his

leadership it's emerged as one of the world's most powerful central banks.

He may have grown use to the pink tailcoats and top hats of his attendance in Threadedneedle Street,

but his background was far from privileged.

His father worked on the railways and then became a teacher.

His mom was a housewife and sang in the church choir. Their son, an academic

whiz, studied hard and gained a top first at Cambridge going on to teach at MIT and the London School of Economics. Throughout his

demanding public life he's been sustained by his twin passions for cricket and

Aston Villa. His other great love appears to have been an intriguingly slow burn.

He first met Barbara, the woman who would become his wife, in 1970.

They married in 2007. He says being the governor of the Bank of England is actually the easiest job I've ever done. You're in charge and you've got tremendous support.

Well, Sir Mervyn, you've only got a few weeks to go at the bank where you've worked for 22 years.

I'm wondering if you're planning a proper knees up to say goodbye.

I'm planning a gap year or a gap six months or so as a

break so it'll be a holiday and the key phrase I wonder if it might be in the

introduction was you're in charge. You have this backroom

reputation for being very hard-working, single-minded, and quite often the

governor was the iron fist. Do you think that's fair? I don't think the iron fist is. I

...