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 1988, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. A castaway once described herself as a convent girl destined by her upbringing to be a cozy wife and mother,

which is perhaps not quite how the rest of us think of her.

Until recently, she was that fantasy glam figure of the 80s, The Rich Bitch in an American soap opera, in this case Sable in the Colbys.

Before that, she served a steady apprenticeship in the theatre, made her movie with Marlon Brando and

became a big television star by appearing in Tenco and Connie.

After the glitz of her Hollywood soap opera,

she returned to London to work with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She is Stephanie Beecham.

Stephanie, can I go back on that quote?

I mean, was the background cozy?

Very cozy.

Red velvet curtains, chickens and dogs and dogs and cats and ponies and ballet and the ideal upbringing.

Where was it? In Barnet in Hertfordshire. Four of us. My name I've always said was Richard Di-Genie-Stef, because my parents could never quite remember which one of us was which.

I was the third one out. I think it's quite a good position to be because you don't get

looked at all the time. What do your parents do? Mommy never did well I say Nish never did

anything she was always very busy looking after us a lot and making everything very cozy.

My father worked for the Grosvenor estate, seemed to look after the Duchesses quite a lot, and he

was an insurance before that nothing to do with the

theatre. Was there anything in the family at all from any of the various branches

that might suggest you might become an actress at all? Not even vaguely and one of our quotes in the family, one of the family things that we like best is that

...