When I saw Aung San Suu Kyi and Desert Island Discs being talked about on Twitter, I couldn't work out what was going on. Astonishingly, Aung San Suu Kyi had begun her Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech with this sentence (full text)

"Long years ago, sometimes it seems many lives ago, I was at Oxford listening to the radio programme Desert Island Discs with my young son Alexander. It was a well-known programme (for all I know it still continues) ..."

Happily Radio 4 isn't a place which lets such an opportunity slip out of its grasp and Gwyneth Williams, (Controller Radio 4) immediately wrote a personal invitation to Aung San Suu Kyi which was hand delivered by Fergal Keane during Daw Suu's emotional visit to the UK.  A few months later Gwyn appeared in our office to pass on the amazing news that Aung San Suu Kyi had agreed - in principle - to appear on the programme. I embarrassed myself by actually jumping up and down on the spot. 

As a figure of world renown, Aung San Suu Kyi is spoken of along with Gandhi and Mandela and from the start I was certain that we should interview her in her home in Rangoon where she'd been so isolated but was now free. However as Burma is only just opening up to visitors I knew the whole production would be difficult to pull off. A key figure was my colleague Nick Springate, a Senior World Affairs Producer with BBC News, whose long experience of working in Burma meant he has unrivalled knowledge and contacts and was a brilliant 'fixer'. 

We did get our visas and a date for the interview only to be bumped by President Obama - who was to visit Daw Suu in Rangoon (and was clearly enraptured by her). Luckily we got another date.  1630 on Tuesday December 18th at her home in Rangoon.  Kirsty and I set about preparing (research, risk assessments, jabs, cancelling pre-Christmas plans).  5 days before we were due to travel, Nick rang to say Daw Suu would be in Naypyitaw, Burma's administrative capital city, rather than Rangoon.  My heart sank as we'd all been keenly anticipating experiencing being inside her famous home.  But of greater concern was the complete absence of any musical choices.  I felt the whole enterprise was hanging by the slimmest of threads.  Then on the Friday morning Nick rang sounding really cheerful.  He had her music choices!  I suddenly felt more able to breathe. 

When Bob, Kirsty and I met up for a pre-flight drink none of us could really believe what we were about to do:  we were all conscious that we were about to fly into Burma on official visas in a way that had on many occasions been denied Aung San Suu Kyi's husband and children.  To add to the sense of unreality, the next day, as we - bleary eyed - were checking in for the connecting flight to Naypyitaw, Bob said, "eyes right" and a frisson of excitement swept across the room as Aung San Suu Kyi herself arrived to board our flight. Incredibly I found myself sitting right behind her and could admire the beautiful yellow roses she was wearing in her hair at very close quarters.  By this stage Kirsty and I had descended into silence.

Naypyitaw is a strange place.  Not only was the shiny new airport empty, but so too was the eight-lane highway to our not-quite-finished hotel.  En route it occurred to me that the road was in some ways a metaphor for Burma (Myanmar) today - to the left huge, concrete buildings which will become international hotels, to the right women in straw hats were sweeping the road and the fields were being tended in a way that will have remained unchanging for centuries.

After reviewing and refining the programme structure, questions and music, Kirsty and I had a brief bite to eat and a 15 minute power nap before heading off with Nick and Bob to Daw Suu's house.  Unlike her home in Rangoon, it's an anonymous house on what feels like a new housing estate still in the process of being built.

She was running late but that she'd phoned ahead and asked for us to wait inside.  Bob rigged the mics, Kirsty ran through her introduction and I had a quick look around the room, noting that two portraits of her father, General Aung San, a hero of the Burmese independence movement in the forties who was assassinated when his daughter was just two, hung on the walls.

And then there she was - resplendent in a beautifully embroidered coral outfit.  As we'd experienced at the airport, you sense her presence even before you see her, such is the aura around her.  She is beautiful - very composed, with frighteningly good posture - she sat still and erect throughout the 80 minutes we had with her - and has a very direct gaze.  We knew she was a very private person, capable of intense steeliness and were expecting her to be formidable but people who knew her privately also reported that she had a playful side too.  We were hopeful that the brilliant format of Desert Island Discs would perhaps allow her to show more of her personality than is usually possible in straightforward political interviews.

We had been told we'd have no more than an hour with her so had planned to play a minimal amount of the music as we recorded. In the event, Daw Suu was listening with such attention, and was so obviously moved by what she heard, that we let the music run.  The time flew by:  re-reading the notes I took at the time is one word that stands out - I'd written "surreal" in capital letters.

As soon as we'd finished, we took a few photos and then she was gone, leaving us with huge relief that after all the planning, travelling, preparing and worrying, we had actually recorded a programme.  As we left for the inevitable celebratory refreshment, we were all struck by how much thought she'd given to the interview and impressed by her humility, charmed by her sense of humour.  We felt privileged to have met her and we are just so grateful to Aung San Suu Kyi for giving us her time and sharing her story with us so generously.

A correction has been made to this blog post since it was originally published. 

 

Related Links: 

Desert Island Discs - Aung San Suu Kyi
Desert Island Discs - Homepage

Kirsty Young's preview interview in the Radio Times

Politicians and Nobel laureates in the DID archive:
Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher - UK's first woman Prime Minister
Rt Hon Baroness Boothroyd - first woman Speaker of the House of Commons
Wangari Maathai - first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize
Rt Hon Mo Mowlam - former Northern Ireland Secretary

Music of course is the heart of Desert Island Discs and this latest selection features some of the greatest names of the musical world. Opera giants like Joan Sutherland and Kirsten Flagstad, pianist Alfred Brendel, conductor Leopold Stokowski - all names which crop up in other people's choices, here making their own. For pop music there are the likes of Cilla Black and Tony Bennett, and from the jazz world, Dave Brubeck recounts how his talent for the piano saved him an immediate posting to the front line in the Second World War, to a battle that killed his entire platoon.

In this Olympic year, it's fascinating to listen to some of the stars of past Games, like Judy Grinham, who won swimming gold in Melbourne 1956 in the 100m backstroke, or Lillian Board, silver medallist in Mexico 1968 for the 400m. In other sports there are cricketers Jim Laker and Geoffrey Boycott, boxer Henry Cooper, and if you think that today's footballers are sometimes less than articulate, listen to Danny Blanchflower talking in 1960 to know it wasn't always thus.

And that of course is one of the joys of an archive - it's that flavour of another time. Listen to Mary Wilson, wife of Harold Wilson talk about life at Number 10 in 1969, broadcasters David Frost or Joan Bakewell at the start of their careers, to John Noakes, a rather plummy actor (who knew?!) talk about Blue Peter, or to prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn recount how she used to concentrate so hard she had to be reminded from the wings to smile. With all this to listen to, who needs reminding!

You'll notice when you dip in to these recordings that they are not full programmes, just fragments of them. Back in the day, radio programmes were recorded on reels of tape which posed two problems. The first was that a reel of tape is quite big - 12 inches - and there simply wasn't enough physical space for the BBC to save and store everything. The second was that tape was expensive, and more often than not would be recorded over once a programme has been broadcast. Imagine being the person with the responsibility of deciding what stays and what goes!

The majority of these newly available recordings actually belonged to a long time producer of Desert Island Discs, Derek Drescher, who on his retirement gave his collection to the British Library. These tapes have been loaned back to the BBC to be converted into digital files. You'll also notice too that the recordings have no music in them, which is another vagary of how the programmes were saved. Happily of course, we do have the track information of all the castaways on the Desert Island Discs website.

Some of the recordings were sent in by listeners and it's wonderful that when we think some of these programmes have been lost forever, that they have been lovingly saved by the audience. If you have any recordings of old programmes which we don't have on the website we would love to hear from you - it could be a team effort!

Alison Hughes is Producer of Desert Island Discs

• Listen and download to Desert Island Discs

• Download programmes from the Desert Island Discs Archive

Roy Plomley, deviser of Desert Island Discs, and presenter of the programme from 1942 to 1985.

Freelance producer Roy Plomley was wearing his pyjamas on a cold November night in 1941 when he jotted down the idea for a programme in which a person is asked the question "if you were wrecked on a desert island, which gramophone records would you like to have with you? - providing of course that you have a gramophone and needles as well." Now obviously we have CDs and digital editing, but the brilliant simplicity of the format has continued to be both entertaining and relevant for 70 years.

We've had a glorious year celebrating the seven decades of Desert Island Discs, kicking off with an anniversary programme with Sir David Attenborough, including a day when all the Local and National BBC stations had their listeners choose what they would take if they were castaway, a DID Prom and now a book to mark the nearly 3,000 souls who have so far been marooned on that lonely island.

Compiling the book with author Sean Magee has been a parlour game in itself. Our discussions started a year ago about how we could possibly choose which castaways to include and so by painful elimination who to leave out - was it going to be Marlene Dietrich and her less than accurate account of her early career or Talullah Bankhead; we had to feature Alfred Hitchcock talking about the filming of Psycho but what about Sir Harry Whitlow, who we discovered in our research didn't actually exist but was made up by Roy Plomley for an April Fool! Of course the Desert Island Discs team knows the contemporary programmes inside out, but despite the scope of the DID archive on the website where you can now download about 1,500 editions, we asked the BBC archive in Caversham to investigate which scripts they had of the early decades, starting with the first ever recording with the comedian Vic Oliver which was done at the BBC's bombed-out Maida Vale studios in London in January 1942.

We then spent agonising hours drafting and redrafting lists. In the course of our research we came across funny stories - for instance Alistair MacLean who on arrival turned out not to be the best-selling author who Roy Plomley thought he had booked, but an officer from the Ontario Tourist board with the same name - and moving stories for example that of the RAF pilot Guy Gibson, known for the Dambusters operation who was killed just after the recording. We also have the iconic Eartha Kitt and Luciano Pavarotti, the adored Joyce Grenfell, Sir David Attenborough, the scientifically brilliant Stephen Hawking, Fred Hoyle, the controversial Diana Mosley, Gordon Brown, the anarchic Spike Milligan, Kenny Everett, the inspirational Desmond Tutu and so on and so on. For the book Sean has also talked to the presenters after Roy Plomley: not just to Kirsty Young, but to Sue Lawley and Michael Parkinson who have both been cast away themselves too. We found so much interesting "trivia" in passing that we've decided to pull it all together in a second book called Flotsam and Jetsam, which will be out on 23 October.

As Kirsty Young says, the appeal of Desert Island Discs lies in displaying "the frailties and strengths of the human condition, how our creativity, grit and humanity can see us through." Here's to the next 70 years ...

Desert Island Discs: 70 Years of Castaways by Sean Magee is published by Bantam Press - find more information on the Random House site

To mark the 70th anniversary of Desert Island Discs, a unique concert is taking place on Monday 3rd September as part of the BBC Proms. Kirsty Young will be joined by former castaways live on stage at the Royal Albert Hall to share some of their musical choices.

We'll be running a live chat during the concert, so come to this post on Monday evening at 7pm to join in the conversation as you listen.

• Monday's Desert Island Disc concert
• Find out more about the Proms
• The Desert Island Discs site

Leanne Buckle writes:

"After seventy years of gulls and gramophone records, Desert Island Discs is celebrating its birthday.

As well as our wonderful anniversary programme this Sunday, Kirsty will also be presenting Castaway - 70 years of Desert Island Discs at 8pm on Radio 4 this Saturday evening. So, as the anniversary has neared, in the office we've been pondering its remarkable staying power.

It is a perfect format - who isn't interested in the richness of human experience? It promises inspiring stories and personal memories, often triggered by the individual and meaningful music choices. They're very important of course, but over the eight years that I've been producing the programme, it seems to me that what the programme also offers, in an uncertain world, is rules.

Anthropologically, I wonder whether we don't need the notion of rules to survive - we like the idea of acquiring a moral boost from sticking to them (and perhaps even more, we like knowing transgressors are duly punished).

I'm probably asked more about the rules than anything else - and the implication is always that we don't apply them strictly enough. How impractical should the luxury item be? How much shelf space can a bespoke book occupy?

Of course, the point of asking our castaways for their luxury and book is to acquire further insight - a slender volume of poems by one author tells far more than a fat compendium of a thousand verses.

Our castaways are heart-warmingly inventive when it comes to bending the rules (Vikram Seth isn't the first to try to smuggle another person onto the island, but to try to take someone else, in addition to an elaborate set of calligraphy equipment is decidedly cheeky.)

Nigella Lawson took liquid temazepam and David Walliams a loaded gun. both thinking they might want their stay to be a finite one - a fascinating insight, but are they luxuries? We take a firmer line now against radios - but there are stacks already on the beach.

If anything, it feels as if we're saying "no" more than we used to -but still, the island is piled high with survival guides, penknives, cooking equipment and mosquito nets - and also boasts a good number of boats bobbing nearby.

Often the luxuries tell of the optimism of the human spirit - scores of pianos, violins, trombones and a brace of violas - our castaways are a self-improving lot. Languages too - any number of books taken 'in the original' as well as French, Spanish, Latin and German primers - how uplifting, I think, that in a situation where there is no-one else to talk to - our castaways resolutely hope they will master a new language.

Search our website to see what else has been smuggled on and ponder too whether, if you were being cast away, you wouldn't ask for your family photo album but also try to slip something actually quite useful in your pocket.

Even our wonderful 70th anniversary castaway, Sir David Attenborough, not a stranger to the shores of our island, will be cribbing from a survival manual (and if he needs help from a text-book, heaven help the rest of us)."

Leanne Buckle is Producer, Desert Island Discs

• Visit the Desert Island Discs website for an amazing archive of programmes to listen to, download and keep.

Tea for the Goons in 1958 - from left to right - Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe

How would you react to the phrases "needle-nardle-noo" or "what, what, what what, what!"?

Naturally, context is everything. In response to the query "what are you doing in my bathroom?" well, they're clearly inappropriate. However, if it's an exchange from The Goon Show, it's probably the least alarming piece of dialogue on offer - and the man uttering those deathless words would be Harry Secombe, worthy of a celebration all his own.

The Goon Show is the category-defying, post-war radio comedy that has influenced everything from Monty Python to the Mighty Boosh. It was crafted by Harry together with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. But while one had the voices and the other the sheer insanity, it was Harry's cheery, indefatigable and perpetually dogged Neddie Seagoon who braced the whole show together.

Harry would have been 90 this Thursday - and The Goon Show is just part of a career which took in a generous spectrum of comedy and drama.

His showbusiness start came at The Windmill Theatre in London in the late forties, and Harry's radio career began with Variety Bandbox and Educating Archie. When the Goons took off, a parallel career as a singer beckoned. Perhaps not unusual in an age when most entertainers could warble a tune or two, but Harry studied under Italian maestro Manlio di Veroli, becoming one of a select few Bel Canto tenors.

In common with most of his peers, Harry served in the Second World War. In a suitably Goonish twist, he found himself promoted to sergeant by his old regiment while entertaining troops in the Falklands - nearly four decades after being demobbed.

In addition to a full recording career, Harry also acted on Broadway and in films, alongside Dame Sybil Thorndike and Sir Richard Attenborough - playing characters created by Charles Dickens and French writer Alexandre Dumas.

A regular comedic presence on BBC television and ITV throughout the sixties and seventies, Harry occasionally paired up not only with old cohorts Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, but contemporaries like Ronnie Barker and Arthur Lowe. A keen churchgoer in his youth, Harry's later television career saw him fronting various religious programmes and putting his mighty singing voice to good use.

Like a lot of notable creative individuals, such as Russell T. Davies, Rob Brydon and Terry Nation, Harry Secombe was a Welshman, born in Swansea in 1921. He was pretty candid, however, about not actually being able to speak Welsh. He died in Surrey in April 2001 leaving a wife and four children.

Alongside his comedic legacy, a theatre in Sutton bears his name. Fans of A Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy will have heard his son Andy as Colin the Security Robot - "Mr Prefect, sir!" - in the final radio series.

However, you needn't take my word for it. Hear the man himself talk about his life on Radio 4 Extra in Goon Abroad at 2.15pm; or pick his favourite music next Sunday on Desert Island Discs Revisited. Both will remain on iPlayer, where you may listen and blow a raspberry in Neddie Seagoon's honour.

Martin Dempsey is producer, Radio 4 Extra

• If The Goon Show is unfamiliar to you, then no amount of explaining will help, and you'd best hie thee to the iPlayer. Better yet, you could catch regular repeats on Radio 4 Extra every Tuesday at 8am, bang on midday or 7pm.
• Goon Abroad is on Radio 4 Extra all this week at 2.15pm and available to listen again up to seven days after broadcast
• Desert Island Discs Revisited is on Radio 4 Extra next Sunday
• Follow Radio 4 Extra on Twitter
• View the Radio 4 Extra comedy schedule

Harry Secombe, Michael Parkinson and Peter Sellers on Parkinson in 1972

Bruce Forsyth with Harry Secombe

Sir Harry singing with Dana on The Harry Secombe Show in 1973

Harry Secombe presenting an edition of Songs of Praise from the Haymarket Theatre Royal, London in 1999

One desert island, only eight tracks of music to keep you company. What will you choose?

From today Kirsty Young is offering you a unique opportunity to take part in Desert Island Discs. Cast yourself away and share the eight tracks that you would take with you to a desert island.

All you have to do is go to the Desert Island Discs website, enter your eight tracks and nominate the one track you would save from the waves if the tropical sea threatened to carry off your selection.

Nominations will close at 2pm on Friday 3rd June and Kirsty will then reveal the listeners' choices in a special live celebration of Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 on Saturday 11th June at 9am.

If you search the Desert Island Discs archive you can find the choices of everyone who has been interviewed on the programme since it began in 1942. There are more than 2,850 castaways to search and over 500 episodes of the programme to listen to and download.

You can search by castaway or by music choice so you can check whose choices you share. Will you be like Sir Michael Caine, Elton John and Steve Coogan and choose Elgar's Enigma Variations? Or like Twiggy, Spike Milligan and Antonio Carluccio and choose Yesterday by The Beatles? Or will you choose a spoken word recording like Judi Dench, Noel Coward and Princess Grace of Monaco who all took some Shakespeare?

It doesn't have to be music or poetry - Ann Widdecombe chose the sound of a hippo, Matthew Pinsent chose cricket commentary. What is the soundtrack of your life? The tracks you can't live without - the tracks that will transport your imagination back home or back in time and lift your spirits in your island isolation?

The most popular track with castaways over the years is Beethoven's Symphony Number 9 in D Minor which has been chosen by 97 castaways including Martin Sheen, Paulo Coelho and Dr Susan Greenfield. The top ten most chosen tracks by castaways are all classical recordings. Will the listeners agree?

We also want to know why you've chosen these pieces. What's the story behind your soundtrack? The memories trapped in each track? We'll be featuring listener's stories on the website and in the live programme on the 11th June.

Cast yourself away at the Desert Island Discs website.

Alice Feinstein is the Editor of Desert Island Discs

• Go to the Desert Island Discs website to enter your eight tracks and nominate the one track you would save from the waves if the tropical sea threatened to carry off your selection.
• Picture caption: "Arena: Desert Island Discs 22/12/1981 © BBC Picture shows - Roy Plomley, presenter of 'Desert Island Discs'. On BBC2, Tuesday February 23 1982, Arena celebrates the 40th anniversary of one of the worlds longest-running series in broadcasting - Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. Here we can see Roy Plomley, who has presented the series since it started, relaxing on his 'desert island', specially built for Arena's programme."

At Radio 4, we've been trying to make the experience of listening to programmes on the internet as comfortable as listening live on a radio set. For far too long, listening online has meant things like retreating to a dark home office where your computer lives, or precariously balancing your laptop on a kitchen table to catch up on The Archers.

You've been able to listen on the move with our ever-growing set of podcasts, but that normally requires you to transfer files from a computer to a gadget.

So, we're delighted that we can now offer the huge Desert Island Discs archive to listen in an easier and more portable way: on your mobile phone.

If you haven't visited the Desert Island Discs archive on your computer yet, it's a new website that lets you see thousands of public figures' eight record choices, from Ivor Novello in the 1940s right up to Cath Kidston's recent appearance and beyond.

You can listen to more than 500 programmes (as podcasts if you prefer) and can even search for particular types of people: all the politicians who have appeared on the programme, all the novelists or just comedians.

We're hearing, from your comments on Twitter and Facebook, that once you start exploring the website it becomes very addictive, and that's what we have been aiming for!

There's something particularly magical about exploring the archive on your phone, however. All that history - pardon the cliché - in the palm of your hand! Whether you're at home, waiting for a bus or relaxing in the long-awaited spring sunshine, you can listen to the full interview* with one of your favourite public figures - Kathy Burke, Rolf Harris, Sir David Frost...

To use the mobile version of the Desert Island Discs archive, you'll need a phone with a web browser and reasonably large screen. It's compatible with almost all "smartphones" (to be technical, it works on Android, Blackberry, iPhone and N-series Nokia devices among many others). Just open the web browser on your phone, and use this address: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/desertislanddiscs

I hope you enjoy it!

David Jones is a senior producer, Audio & Music Interactive, BBC Radio 4

James Simcock, the executive producer for DID on mobile adds:

"As the BBC works hard to embrace the explosion in mobile internet use, some gems such as Desert Island Discs really come into their own. The enforced simplicity of making something work smoothly across a variety of mobile screens is no bad thing and in this instance, it's the breadth of outstanding audio content that is bought to the fore.
As David explains in his post, you no longer need to be confined to any particular space or context to explore these archives - just make sure your battery is well-charged, as it's seriously addictive listening. And a tip for Android users: Long-click to access option to 'download' rather than 'play' file for listening when offline."

Hello again,

I've been reading your comments and feedback on the blog and elsewhere and wanted to respond to some of the points that people have made. I commented last week on the blog and Streetlight2 has identified some of the other things many of you are asking about so I've based my answers around them:

The presenters on 4Extra - what's the thinking behind changing them from the R7 team?

Now that Radio 4 Extra is aligned with Radio 4, the presentation teams are working together. Some of the Radio 4 presenters were keen to work on Radio 4 Extra, which is very different from reading the news on Radio 4! Of course Jim Lee, a stalwart of Radio 7/4Extra, has worked on both networks for over 8 years and Alan Smith, who was with Radio 7 in the early days, is now back with us again. Former Radio 7 presenters will have the occasional presence on 4Extra; in fact you can hear Helen Aitken in a couple of weeks interviewing a comedy troupe performing a Sherlock Holmes spoof.

All of the presenters have other work of course, both on radio and television, and fans of Alex Riley can see him popping up regularly on BBC Three.

What about the lack of drama programming?

The drama remit for Radio 7 was originally to broadcast a minimum of 50 hours per week. As Radio 4 Extra, we committed to a minimum of 55 hours of drama per week, and we actually broadcast more than that. You might be surprised to know that on Radio 4Extra, we broadcast on average of 68 hours per week, including of course the 24-hour overnight repeats.

As Head of Programmes launching Radio 7 over 8 years ago, and faced with a blank sheet of paper, I was keen to schedule longer drama on the archive station, and introduced two 90 minute plays at weekends, plus a 75-minute Woman's Hour archive omnibus on Sundays. The omnibus has been popular, and to build on that we have introduced a second 75 minute omnibus on Saturdays, made up of the previous week's Radio 4 Woman's Hour serial. With adding some new elements to the schedule, we stopped broadcasting the 90 minute drama on Sundays, but brought in the 60 minute children's/family drama slot, commissioning 8 new dramas in the process.

But of course, radio stations evolve and as with any radio station we will continue to review our output.

On Radio 4 Extra I was also keen to retain the 60 minute dramas, daily from Monday to Friday, plus the daily 45 minute dramas. These have included Fortunes of War, Howard's End and Ben Hur, three terrific and substantial dramas, plus currently for Easter, the landmark Dorothy L Sayer's production, The Man Who Would be King, in twelve 45 minute episodes. We have had good feedback on these productions, and are planning to follow-up with the Complete Smiley dramatisations, beginning in May.

The 7th Dimension and Crime and Thriller hours have remained the same, with the 1.00am repeat of the Crime and Thriller Hour being re-instated for the night owls from the week beginning 16 May.

Complaints about broadcasting The Archers, Ambridge Extra and Desert Island Discs. If some of these programs are available on Radio 4, then why put them on Radio 4 Extra?

Following the research and consultation we undertook, the BBC Trust wanted to ensure that there wouldn't be too many changes in the re-branding and in fact 85% of the Radio 4 Extra schedule has remained unchanged.

The Archers and Desert Island Discs are very popular strands, so we decided to build on these strengths to attract Radio 4 listeners (many of whom were/are unaware of the existence of Radio 7).

Regarding The Archers, we considered some archive programming, but with some missing programmes this would be difficult to sustain; we also felt that a repeat of the omnibus was not quite right, so the decision was made to commission a short, new Archers serial - Ambridge Extra. This will be running until the end of June, followed by a summer break.

I was interested to note that in the most recent podcast chart, Ambridge Extra came in at number 2 - just behind Adam and Joe.

When I started Radio 7, archive Desert Island Discs was on my shopping list, and I was keen to group the DID programmes in batches featuring The Comedians, The Actors, The Musicians etc. I have always thought that listeners would value the opportunity to hear archive editions of DID and the launch of 4Extra provides this as does the new DID website, updating information on the castaway, linking into the schedule when possible. For example, we began with children's authors, and when Jacqueline Wilson was last week's castaway, we broadcast one of her readings on the 4 0'Clock Show.

We will be following up with The Authors and The Comedians.

Any change to a network can be difficult to accept, and when the idea was initially mooted to change Radio 7, I admit I had my reservations.

Like some listeners, I was concerned that the station might become too serious.

However, I truly believe that there are many benefits in being so closely aligned with Radio 4. Some fresh ideas have been introduced, but at the same time I feel that we have managed to retain the entertainment essence that launched Radio 7 eight years ago - we continue to bring you great radio comedy and drama.

It would be impossible to please all of our listeners all of the time, but I hope that all of you manage to find entertaining programmes to listen to on Radio 4 Extra most of the time,

Best wishes

Mary

Mary Kalemkerian is Head of Programmes at BBC Radio 4 Extra

• The photograph is from the BBC picture library. The caption reads "Picture shows (l-r) Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Jo Kendall, David Hatch and Bill Oddie, five young comedians from the world-travelled 'Footlights Revue' Cambridge Circus, who star in the new comedy revue series I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, which begins in the BBC Light Programme on Monday 4th October, 1965."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4extra

After we bid a fond farewell to BBC Radio 7 after over 8 years on-air - what a delight to be able instead to welcome you to the world of BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Whether you're a newbie or one of our loyal band of followers - I can promise you plenty to enjoy in our new schedule, which kicks off tomorrow at 6am.

In keeping with the joys of spring, and the romance of weddings in the air, we are delivering the traditional 'Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue' in our new line-up for the rebranded digital radio station.

For Something Old, Radio 4 Extra will open with a 90' production of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, starring Andrew Sachs and directed in 1984 by former Head of BBC Radio Drama, John Tydeman.

John e-mailed us with the following message:

Seven was Heaven! Since the same team are now scheduling Extra, I have every hope that it too will be something Extra good! There's a gold-mine to be mined of nuggets from the BBC's speech archive, and all programmes in the archive are there because of excellence or because they are of exceptional interest. Gold does not tarnish and often grows in value with age. Listeners are sure to be in for a rich experience for many years to come

Very well expressed, John.

For Something New, we have commissioned new children's dramas, beginning with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a family friendly magazine series, The Four O' Clock Show and an excellent archive drama new to the network, Fortunes of War. There's also plenty of new comedy, including a comedy magazine What's So Funny? presented by Rufus Hound.

Something Borrowed: well, the bulk of our programmes are already borrowed from the archive, but for 4 Extra, in addition to 'borrowing' Desert Island Discs and Ambridge from our sister station Radio 4, we've also borrowed some of the Radio 4 announcers to present some of our programmes. Alan, Kathy, Neil, Rory and Susan Alan and will be joining our presentation team over the coming weeks.

Something Blue? - certainly not our comedy, classic or contemporary! But blue is the colour of the Radio 4 logo, and we've moved a shade away from blue to the lovely, warm colour purple for Radio 4 Extra, as you can see on our website.

If we've managed to tempt you - BBC Radio 4 Extra is available to enjoy on digital radio, digital television and online.

Mary Kalemkerian is Head of Programmes at BBC Radio 4 Extra

• The picture, from the BBC picture archive, shows George Bernard Shaw at the microphone in 1931. John Tydeman's production of Shaw's Arms and the Man opens broadcasting for 4 Extra tomorrow morning at 0600.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs

What a week for everyone involved in Desert Island Discs. It began with a blizzard of checking, fixing and not a little sweating to get everything ready for the launch of the new web site. Of course in the event, it all went very smoothly and soon there were people passing by my desk saying, "it's live!" with a mixture of amazement and excitement. No time to stop though as we were recording an interview with Tony Robinson at 1030. This was followed by recording some more of our new series for Radio 4 Extra - Desert Island Discs Revisited - in which Kirsty introduces some gems from the archive.

We're kicking off this Sunday at 1000 on Radio 4 Extra with a series of children's authors beginning with the wonderful J.K. Rowling (from 2000). After that it was my chance to show off the website for the first time to Kirsty. She'd seen the designs of course, but it's a very different thing to seeing the sumptuous all-singing, all-dancing version. Happily she was thrilled with it (she thinks people will find it addictive) and she was soon searching for castaways who had choosen 2 of her favourites - tracks by ELO and Joni Mitchell. The site itself is a fantastic technical feat involving lots of brilliant people who do jobs I still don't understand - it's been a pleasure working with them.

A word on the material that's there - from the outset we've treated everything - the track, book & luxury choices, what was written about the programme and the audio as part of the archive. So both what you read and what you can hear should be considered in the context of the time they were written and broadcast. Many castaways have gone on to even greater achievements (David Cameron, Colin Firth), changed or lost jobs - it's fascinating to see what they've done since the original recording. I hope everyone will agree how beautiful the site looks - thanks to iPlayer picture editors - but there are some castaways for whom we've been unable to source copyright-cleared pics. If agents, publishers, family members or the castaways themselves can help us, we'd be delighted to receive an email from them.

Martin Sheen and producer Leanne Buckle.

We're building up now to our return on Radio 4 - with the fantastic Martin Sheen. I was distraught to miss the recording (done in February) - I'm a huge fan of The West Wing - and sure enough Martin was an absolute delight, introducing himself to unsuspecting members of staff and public alike in the reception of Broadcasting House with "Hello, I'm Martin Sheen. Good to meet you". A colleague caused great delight apparently as he left the next door studio and came upon him unexpectedly greeting him with, "Well hello Mr President". Wish I'd been there. It's going to be a great start to our next run of programmes and hopefully everyone will enjoy hours of fun searching with website... and that's before you even start listening - there's over 350 hours of archive editions of DID available - both to listen to via the site or to download. As someone who's always been passionate about what the BBC has in its archives, this is one of the most thrilling aspects of the whole project.

Finally, this has been a huge project but I hope you won't mind if I say a public 'thank you' to the stars of the show - David Jones and the Radio 4 interactive team, Caroline Sotorrio and the magneticNorth team in Manchester and the one and only Tony Crabb - our project manager who kept the whole show on the road. They've all been an inspiration to work with. Happy listening.

Cathy Drysdale is Executive Producer of Desert Island Discs

• The new Desert Island Discs web site is online now.
• Listen to Martin Sheen's appearance on Desert Island Discs on Sunday at 1115.
• The pictures show Roy Plomley, the programme's originator and long-time presenter, with guest fitness guru Eileen Fowler in 1974 and the programme's current producer Leanne Buckle with Martin Sheen.

Today we announced a series of new programmes which will be appearing on our digital radio stations. Also, we confirmed that we are changing the name of BBC Radio 7 to BBC Radio 4 Extra in April. You can find all the details in the press release.

Some people have questioned why we are altering a much-loved service: is this just unnecessary management tinkering? Firstly, let me offer a few words of reassurance. Radio 4 Extra will not be fundamentally different to Radio 7. The vast majority of the programming will remain much-loved archive productions, and we will continue to focus on comedy, drama and entertainment rather than offering news or current affairs...

Continue reading this post on the BBC Radio blog...

Tim Davie is Director of Audio & Music

• The picture shows Roy Plomley and his guest Noel Coward on the occasion of the twenty-first anniversary of Desert Island Discs in 1963. Coward had been on the list of guests drawn up by Plomley when he devised the programme in 1941.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006slnx

In Feedback this week we discussed the deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg but listeners weren't concerned about what he said on Desert island Discs about his inability to give up smoking, or where he took his girlfriends in the days before he met his wife.

No, our correspondents were concerned about whether he should have been on Desert Island Discs at all so soon after the Government had announced big cuts in benefits.

They wondered if his appearance was part of a Government PR campaign to show the warm human side of our leaders who have had to take such tough decisions. Eyebrows were also raised about a storyline in The Archers which seems to fit nicely with a Government drive to get more people online. Paranoia or intelligent scepticism? What do you think?

I talked to the Editor of Desert Island discs Alice Feinstein about that invitation to Nick Clegg:

Roger Bolton is presenter of Feedback

• Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
• Listen to Nick Clegg's Desert Island Discs appearance on the Radio 4 web site.
• Feedback is now on Twitter. Follow @BBCFeedback.

The chairs in our Desert Island studio have had some legendary bottoms sitting on them in their time, but few more legendary than that of Sir Tom Jones.

His recording was a joy - from the 'sexually voracious' image back in the days ("you're creating a monster," he says "without even realising it") to the richness of his Welsh accent which seems to be as strong as ever despite 40 years spent living in LA (our hearts sang at the mention of Barry Island).

The highlight for us was an unaccompanied burst of 'It's Not Unusual.' Judge for yourselves, but I'd say the highlight for him was my mum's freshly made, authentic Welsh cakes (thanks mum). Not only did we eat them in the studio, but he took the three we couldn't manage home in a napkin...

Leanne Buckle is producer of Desert Island Discs

• Listen to Tom Jones on Desert Island Discs on the Radio 4 web site.
• Leanne took the picture of Tom eating one of her mother's Welsh cakes in the Desert Island Discs studio and the top picture shows Tom on Top of the Pops in 1965 - it's from the BBC's picture library which, as I never tire of pointing out, is called 'Elvis'.

They don't call it 'the legendary Christmas issue' for nothing. The Radio Times at Christmas is a genuine publishing event. Still, in the age of the web and free listings pull-outs, the 274-page issue (the first to feature two different covers since 1923) will sell well over 2 million copies and clear nearly £5 million in revenue from the cover price alone. And around the country millions will get their felt-tips and their ballpoints out to ring the programmes they'll be listening to or watching over the 14 days it covers.

So I asked a select group of top Radio 4 people to get their own copies out and ring the Radio 4 programmes they're planning to listen to over Christmas and the New Year, starting today with broadcasting phenomenon and Desert Island Discs presenter Kirsty Young. Here are her choices. Fascinatingly, on page 242 of her double issue, she reveals that Michael Caine, Sunday's Desert Island Discs guest, is in her top three guests of all time.

And if you'd like to join in and tell the world your Radio 4 choices from the double issue, get your own copy out, ring the programmes you're going to listen to and upload pics to your favourite picture sharing site (Facebook, Flickr, Twitpic... there are many). Or just tell the world in a comment here on the blog, on Twitter or on Facebook. Whatever you do, tag it #MyXmasOn4.

Over the next few days I'll be posting the Radio Times selections of Julian Worricker (You and Yours presenter), Eddie Mair (PM presenter), Mark Damazer (Radio 4 Controller), Even Davis (Today presenter), Libby Purves (Midweek presenter), Tim Davie (Director of BBC Audio and Music) and Quentin Cooper (Material World presenter). I nearly secured Martha Kearney's selections today but she left London early to get to North Yorkshire for Any Questions ahead of the snow. Hope she made it.

Kirsty's selections from the legendary Christmas issue:

• Desert Island Discs with Michael Caine, this Sunday at 1115. "In the top three guests - ever", she says.
• The News at Bedtime, 1815, Christmas Eve: "Comedy gold. A must."
• Woman's Hour, with Jane Garvey,1000, Christmas Eve: "I will be wrapping and Jane will be the perfect friend to do it with even though we've never met."
• Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show, New Year's Day, 1130. Kirsty says: "Without question my absolute favourite radio programme... aside from Today... Obviously!"

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog