Desert Island Discs

Sara Pascoe is a comedian and writer who has appeared on programmes including QI, Taskmaster and the Great British Sewing Bee. She is also a screenwriter and the author of three books including her debut novel Weirdo which won the inaugural Jilly Cooper Prize for fiction last year.
Sara was born in Dagenham and grew up in Romford. She joined a drama club when she was 14 and set her heart on an acting career but failed to get a place at drama school. She read English Literature at the University of Sussex and after graduating took on various jobs to make ends meet including a stint as a London tour bus guide.
In 2007 she performed her first comedy gig to an audience of 12 people in a south London pub. Even though no-one laughed at her jokes, she was well and truly bitten by the stand-up bug and the following year was joint runner-up at the Funny Women Awards. In 2010 she performed her first show at the Edinburgh Festival and appeared on the BBC’s Live at the Apollo two years later.
She is currently touring her latest stand-up tour, I Am A Strange Gloop. Sara lives in London with her husband Steen Raskopoulos and their two children.
DISC ONE: Rhythm Of Life - Sammy Davis Jr. And Ensemble (from Sweet Charity)
DISC TWO: Never Forget - Take That
DISC THREE: Telemachus - Pascoe & Martin
DISC FOUR: Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
DISC FIVE: Gett Off - Prince & The New Power Generation
DISC SIX: Rock Star - N.E.R.D
DISC SEVEN: Best Friend - 50 Cent
DISC EIGHT: Wizardry - Self Esteem
BOOK CHOICE: 1984 by George Orwell
LUXURY ITEM: A typewriter
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Telemachus - Pascoe & Martin
Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Professor Stephen Westaby is a former heart surgeon and writer. During his career he performed over 11,000 operations and pioneered the use of life long artificial hearts as an alternative to donor transplants.
Stephen was born in Scunthorpe in 1948 and went to medical school at Charing Cross Hospital in 1966. The following year he suffered a serious head injury during a rugby match which had a major impact on his personality. He changed from being a shy person lacking in confidence into a fearless, ambitious operator – qualities, he believes, made him entirely suited to being a surgeon.
In 1981 he took up a Research Fellowship in Alabama with John Kirklin, the first surgeon to successfully perform a series of open-heart operations using a heart-lung machine. During his time there Stephen discovered that medical nylon caused some patients to die of post-perfusion syndrome. Following his discovery, the manufacturers of the equipment removed it from the circuit which led to a substantial drop in cardiac surgical mortality.
In 2000 he implanted a revolutionary new heart pump into a man who was terminally ill with heart failure using a device called the Jarvik 2000. Temporary devices – known as bridge to transplant devices – had been used to stabilise patients while they waited for a donor heart but this surgery – transplanting a permanent artificial heart instead of a donor heart was the first of its kind.
Stephen retired from the NHS in 2016. The following year he published Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Theatre which won the BMA President’s Award.
Stephen has two children and lives with his wife in Oxfordshire.
DISC ONE: Wonderful Land - The Shadows
DISC TWO: Viva La Vida - Coldplay
DISC THREE: Baker Street – Gerry Rafferty
DISC FOUR: America - Simon & Garfunkel
DISC FIVE: Forever Autumn - Justin Hayward
DISC SIX: Moonlight Shadow - Mike Oldfield
DISC SEVEN: Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac
DISC EIGHT: Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43: Var. 18. Andante cantabile Performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano) and London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn
BOOK CHOICE: Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus by William Harvey
LUXURY ITEM: A family photograph
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Forever Autumn - Justin Hayward
Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Jessie Buckley is an actor and singer. She recently won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe Award for her critically acclaimed role playing Shakespeare’s wife Agnes in Chloé Zhao’s film Hamnet. Her performance has also garnered her an Academy Award nomination.
Jessie won an Olivier Award for her portrayal of Sally Bowles in a 2021 West End revival of Cabaret. Her breakout film role came in 2018 when she played an aspiring country music singer in the musical Wild Rose.
Jessie was born in Killarney in County Kerry to creative parents. Her mother trained as a singer and harpist and her father, who ran a guest house when she was growing up, writes poetry. As a child Jessie and her siblings put on Irish dancing performances for people who stayed in the guest house.
In 2008 she appeared in the BBC talent show I’d Do Anything – the televised search to find a Nancy for a West End production of Oliver! Jessie came second in the competition and afterwards Sir Cameron Mackintosh, one of the judges, sent her on a Shakespeare workshop at RADA which she says changed her life.
She made her professional stage debut as Anne Egerman in the 2008/2009 revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music at London's Menier Chocolate Factory. In 2010 she stepped away from professional work and enrolled at RADA where she studied for three years.
After graduating she performed on stage, screen and television. She received her first Oscar nomination playing opposite Olivia Colman in the 2021 film the Lost Daughter.
Jessie lives in Norfolk with her husband and their baby daughter.
DISC ONE: Samhradh Samhradh - The Gloaming
DISC TWO: O Holy Night. Composed by Adolph Adam and performed by Marina Cassidy
DISC THREE: Who Knows Where the Time Goes (Live at Philharmonic Hall, New York, NY - October 1969) - Nina Simone
DISC FOUR: Troy - Sinéad O'Connor
DISC FIVE: Send In the Clowns – Judi Dench
DISC SIX: Shobis Galoba (Christmas Song) - Basiani Ensemble
DISC SEVEN: The Red Shoes - Kate Bush
DISC EIGHT: Old Note - Lisa O'Neill
BOOK CHOICE: The Complete Poems of Tim Buckley
LUXURY ITEM: Jessie’s own bathtub and bath salts
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Samhradh Samhradh - The Gloaming
Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Dwayne Fields is an explorer and broadcaster who was appointed the UK’s Chief Scout in 2024. He is the first black Briton to reach the Magnetic North Pole. His television work includes fronting the series 7 Toughest Days and co-presenting Endurance: Race to the Pole, and Expedition: Search for the Nile, with fellow adventurer Ben Fogle.
Dwayne was born in Jamaica and was brought up by his great-grandmother for the first few years of his life. When he was six he moved to north London to live with his mother. He struggled to adapt to his new surroundings until he found his way to a Cub Scouts meeting where he experienced a sense of belonging for the first time since his arrival.
As a teenager, he grew up surrounded by gang violence and experienced a serious knife attack when he was 19. A few years later, during a heated confrontation, he had a gun pointed at him. The gun misfired twice and he survived. This shocking incident spurred Dwayne to change his life and challenge himself to inspire other young people to do the same.
In 2010, he walked 400 nautical miles to reach the Magnetic North Pole. In 2019, he co‑founded the WeTwo Foundation with explorer and wild camper Phoebe Smith. The Foundation gives young people from challenging backgrounds the chance to experience life‑changing adventures
Dwayne lives in Peterborough with his wife Angelique, and their five children.
DISC ONE: Three Little Birds - Bob Marley And The Wailers
DISC TWO: Dance With My Father - Luther Vandross
DISC THREE: I Miss You - DMX feat. Faith Evans
DISC FOUR: The Loco-motion - Kylie Minogue
DISC FIVE: Here I Come - Dennis Brown
DISC SIX: You’re the Apple of My Eye - Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton
DISC SEVEN: Roar - Katy Perry
DISC EIGHT: I'm Still Standing - Elton John
BOOK CHOICE: The Untold Railway Stories: Celebrating 200 Years of Passenger Railways edited by Monisha Rajesh
LUXURY ITEM: A multi-functional pocket knife
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Three Little Birds - Bob Marley And The Wailers
Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Roula Khalaf is a journalist and the first woman to serve as editor of the Financial Times in its 138‑year history. She joined the paper in 1995 as North Africa correspondent, covering the Algerian civil war before reporting more broadly across the Middle East, including Syria, Iran and Iraq, and later the Arab Spring.
Roula was born in Beirut and grew up there during the Lebanese civil war which began in 1975. She studied communications at Syracuse University in New York State and then completed a Master’s degree in International Affairs at Columbia University.
She joined Forbes Magazine in 1989 before relocating to the UK. Her work has earned several awards, including Foreign Commentator of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment in 2016 Awards and the Foreign Press Association’s Feature Story of the Year for her reporting on Qatar in 2013.
Roula has two children with her husband Assaad and lives in London.
DISC ONE: Misunderstanding - Genesis
DISC TWO: Dernière Danse - Indila
DISC THREE: Oghneyat Al Bostah - Ziad Rahbani
DISC FOUR: Feeling Good - Nina Simone
DISC FIVE: Zina - Babylone
DISC SIX: Ya Laure Houbbouki - Fairuz
DISC SEVEN: Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) - Green Day
DISC EIGHT: 7 Seconds - Youssou N’Dour ft Neneh Cherry
BOOK CHOICE: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin
LUXURY ITEM: A notebook and pen
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Ya Laure Houbbouki - Fairuz
Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley