Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 2001, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a singer. He grew up in the northeast of England where music and singing were part of everyday life.

But nobody thought of making a living out of it until a teacher spotted his particular talent and helped him win a place at the Royal College of Music in

London. In a career that's never seen him out of work he's sung in all the great opera

houses of the world and I should add all the great opera houses in this country too.

The role with which he's most associated is Mozart's Don Giovanni,

a part which plays to his strengths as an actor as well as those of a singer.

Why should I have this gift bestowed on me, he's been heard to ask,

how have I earned it?

He is Sir Thomas Allen, known as Tom in the trade.

But there's the old work ethic, Tom, coming through strongly there.

Is it that you just don't think that singing is a proper job, as they say?

No, it's true. That's why I use the phrase, what have I done to deserve it. I suppose it starts

with the number of people during one's life of being an artist who say regularly to you,

yes, but what do you do during the day for a proper job?

And it's very difficult still, I can understand why they say that, because there was a long

period in my life when I didn't realize that a job such as mine existed. I thought if there were opera singers

they were exotic creatures. But you thought if you sang you just sang and that's

what you did to amuse yourself sometimes. Yes I mean I knew there were people that did it

it professionally but you know the idea of doing it professionally

to be the gift of a very very few people throughout the world so you

...