Hello, I'm Krestey 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 2002, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a radio broadcaster. For 18 years her firm and courteous voice

has been the first thing many of us here as we struggle to begin the day.

Before she worked on Radio 4's Today program she presented Women's Hour for 15 years.

And before that, well, she worked in radio.

In fact, she's been presenting live daily radio for 40 years in all.

The medium is in her blood. Now age 60 she's leaving today

behind. Not without a whiff of controversy, it has to be said. Her autobiography

revealed she'd had an affair with the actor Leonard Rossiter, but for the

rest she goes as she came calm, confident and meticulous. Radio has always been my

first love she says, headphones clamped on talking to people it's hugely

fulfilling and a pleasure she is of course Sue McGregor so you simply have to be as

calm and reasonable and sensible as you sound or have you been conning us all these years?

Well I suppose the revelations that you allude to there so you may have changed people's perception on me but...

They have that true, but I'm a reasonably calm and cool person on the surface. I do feel things

passionately underneath but you've said I've been in live radio goodness me for

40 years I can hardly believe it I did start quite young and I come from an

era of radio where it was dined into you that you weren't the important person in

an interview is the person you were talking to and part of the skill of talking

to people was subsuming your own personality. Now things have moved quite a bit since then and

working on the today program. Part of today I suppose is entertaining people as well as enlightening them.

...