Sue Lawley
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 1987
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley admits to being the kind of person whose tummy goes ping when she hears a certain tune and thinks "Ah yes, I remember that, it brings back lovely memories." In conversation with Michael Parkinson, she looks back on her upbringing in Worcestershire, her early days as a journalist and subsequent career as one of our most popular television presenters. She also chooses her eight records to take to the mythical island.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Sergei Rachmaninov Book: French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David Luxury: Iron and ironing board
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 1987 and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. Our castaway is that rarest of all television performers, the one who almost never gets a bad review. |
| 0:35.0 | Whether presenting nationwide or the six o'clock news, standing in for Robin Day or Terry Wogan, |
| 0:40.0 | she defied the critics with her untroubled manner and seemingly effortless |
| 0:44.1 | professionalism. Indeed she moved one hard-boiled journalist to inspect her for |
| 0:48.3 | faults and found none to observe and I quote can she really, or is she some kind of ideal dreamed up by the BBC's |
| 0:56.2 | audience research department? She is Sue Lawley. So just in case you come across to the public as |
| 1:02.0 | being too perfect, I mean has there been anybody |
| 1:04.2 | said anything about you that's really upset you? |
| 1:06.9 | They always upset me whenever they write something about me because it's usually wrong and |
| 1:11.7 | I find it all pretty distressing stuff. I don't know how really one |
| 1:14.7 | expects to be in the public domain and not be written about, but if that were possible that's |
| 1:19.4 | what I'd like more than anything. But I remember once somebody saying that I was the kind of girl you'd take home to |
| 1:27.0 | mom, I mean a chap would take home to mom and she would approve and I knew somehow I knew I should have liked that but I knew when I read it |
| 1:35.8 | that that meant the man didn't like me that he thought I was as you say a bit too perfect or |
| 1:41.5 | something so that hurts actually really if that hurts you I mean what you're going to do when they start really writing really nasty things about you |
| 1:48.3 | Hide in a corner Michael I can't bear it to tell them all to go away |
| 1:52.4 | Still on this thing about what people imagine you to be. |
| 1:55.0 | I mean, part of the Sony projector on television is of this very self-possessed and a collected woman, very much on top of the job and that sort of thing. |
| 2:02.0 | I mean, mean therefore could you |
| 2:04.6 | do you think make a go of living on a desert island are you that self-possessed that |
... |
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