Sue Lawley's guest this week is Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. His musicals dominate London's West End, including Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Starlight Express. He traces a career which began more than 30 years ago when he teamed up with Tim Rice

Michael Crawford

Dec 24th, 1999 36m 46s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Michael Crawford. Renowned for his attention to detail, he has always performed his own stunts - whether roller-skating under moving lorries in Some Mothers Do Have 'Em, or walking the tightrope in the musical Ba

Michael Nyman

Dec 19th, 1999 37m 37s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Michael Nyman. Said to be the best-selling classical composer in Britain, as a child visiting the opera or concert hall his imagination would be caught by a particularly pleasing sequence of notes. Later, he was

Oz Clarke

Dec 12th, 1999 35m 36s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Oz Clarke. As a wine expert, he has sipped, slurped and spat his way through thousands of vintages from around the world. Renowned for his enthusiasm for trying new flavours and varieties, his earliest memory is

Sir Richard Sykes

Dec 5th, 1999 38m 37s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Sir Richard Sykes. The chairman of Glaxo Welcome, as a boy he was not a natural scholar, until he went to work at the pathology laboratory of his local hospital. Understanding the application of science led him t

Warren Mitchell

Nov 28th, 1999 37m 3s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Warren Mitchell. Arthur Miller praised his portrayal of Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman. His King Lear and Shylock won critical acclaim. But he will always be remembered for Alf Garnett, the bigoted, bully fr

Clarissa Dickson Wright

Nov 21st, 1999 35m 28s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Clarissa Dickson Wright.Born into a home where caviar was more common than fish paste, she has always been surrounded by fine food. Yet she came to cooking as a profession late in life, having first practised as

William Gibson

Nov 19th, 1999 34m 58s

This week the castaway on Desert Island Discs is William Gibson. Long before the existence of the Internet, he wrote about 'cyberspace', a boundless world reached only through computers. External space travel, to the Moon and Mars, had become o

Willard White

Nov 7th, 1999 36m 53s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Willard White.Teased as a child for his deep bass voice, it has made him one of the most popular opera stars today. Happy to sing Wagner or Gershwin, he's renowned for his ability to get under the skin of his rol

Ralph Fiennes

Oct 31st, 1999 35m 42s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Ralph Fiennes. His first Hollywood film role was as the Nazi concentration camp leader in Schindler's List, a part which, he says, had a profoundly disturbing effect on him. His latest project, playing the jaded

Rolf Harris

Aug 29th, 1999 34m 6s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Rolf Harris. He's the presenter of one of the most popular television programmes, Animal Hospital, but he's an artist and a musician too. He shot to the top of the charts on many occasions with musical hits as va

Rita Dove

Aug 22nd, 1999 36m 15s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is the poet Rita Dove. The first African-American to become the US Poet Laureate, Rita Dove was brought up to believe that education was the key to the Great American Dream. As a child she would lose herself in the

Sir Roger Norrington

Aug 15th, 1999 37m 44s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is the conductor Sir Roger Norrington. Known for conducting music at a cracking pace, he argues that it's the way the great composers would have played it. Music should be fun, he says, it should entertain - and nev

Patricia Routledge

Aug 8th, 1999 38m 34s

This week the castaway on Desert Island Discs is Patricia Routledge. Once voted the nation's favourite actress for her television roles as Hyacinth Bucket and Hetty Wainthrop, she has also been successful in the theatre, in musicals, and of cou

Rick Stein

Aug 1st, 1999 35m 34s

The castaway on this week's Desert Island Discs is Rick Stein. When the police closed his discotheque down because of too many fights on a Saturday night, all he had left was his restaurant licence. Living by the sea, he took the obvious option

Rod Steiger

Jul 25th, 1999 35m 13s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Rod Steiger. He talks about The Method, Marlon Brando and the depression which dogged him for nearly a decade. And he confesses why he couldn't go to the desert island without Frank Sinatra.[Taken from the origin

Martin Pipe

Jul 18th, 1999 34m 41s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Martin Pipe. He has turned horse training into a science. His animals have the choice of a swimming pool, indoor canter and walking machine, while the on-site laboratory monitors their temperature, blood and weig

Paddy Moloney

Jul 11th, 1999 35m 8s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Paddy Moloney. As the founder of the Chieftains he has taken Irish folk music around the world. No purist, some of his most popular pieces are influenced by other countries folk songs, most notably China, Spain a

Igor Aleksander

Jul 4th, 1999 37m 35s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Profesor Igor Aleksander. He has been researching artificial conciousness for over 30 years. His first machine, Wisard, could recognise faces. His latest, Magnus, can think. He predicts that soon our computors wi

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP

Jun 27th, 1999 38m 1s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is the Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe. Since the last election she has used her free time to write a novel, but has no plans to become a full time author since politics remains her passion. Some two years afte

James Dyson

Jun 20th, 1999 37m 19s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is James Dyson. Today he's one of the richest men in Britain, but he began with an idea, a piece of cardboard and some sticky-backed plastic. Five years and more than 5,000 prototypes later, he was confident that he

John Barry

Jun 13th, 1999 37m 38s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is the film composer John Barry. The Pope is said to adore his soundtrack to Dances with Wolves. Although he's probably best known for the theme tunes he wrote for the Bond movies; including Goldfinger and Diamonds

Chris Bonington

Jun 6th, 1999 37m 20s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Chris Bonington. In a climbing career spanning 48 years he has stood astride British mountaineering 'like a hairy colossus', climbing and leading expeditions as well as photographing and writing about them. Along

Anthony Howard

May 30th, 1999 38m 32s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is the journalist Anthony Howard. He's worked on The New Statesman, The Observer and The Sunday Times, where as Obituaries Editor, he turned a previously dead-end job into a highly competitive art form. A regular te

Christopher Bruce

May 23rd, 1999 37m 28s

Sue Lawley's guest this week is the artistic director of the Rambert Dance Company Christopher Bruce. As a child he was sent to dance lessons to strengthen his legs after polio had left them severely weakened. Ten years later he was the star of