Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 1992 and the presenter was Sue Lolley.

My castaway this week is a singer brought up in a Methodist family in the east end of London.

Coral singing was a natural but by no means special part of his childhood. Indeed it was

too agriculture rather than music that he turned for a career, eventually becoming head

herdsman on a farm in Sussex. It was there that a professional teacher spotted his natural gift

while he was singing in a local choir. He was persuaded to apply to the Guild Hall School

of Music, one a scholarship and embarked on a new career that's made him one of the most

distinguished tenors in the world. He is Anthony Rolf Johnson. I suppose the first question

Anthony must be how much do you miss your former life, the farming and the open air? Not too much

because fortunately I have parents in law who live in the country down in Wales and we have a

little house there sort of chewed a shack really and we have nothing but farmland and trees

all around so whenever I'm missing it I try and get down there and take a fix.

Were you aware there when you were farming or when you were at agricultural college before that

that there was part of you that was unfulfilled? Did you feel there was something more and you

couldn't quite put your finger on what it was? Yes I think all my life I've been

someone to whom things happen and never regard myself as a prime mover

and I suppose when I was a college farming college I did feel a little bit out of water

but the academic side of that took care of that for me and it got buried and it didn't re-emerge

until quite a lot later. The popular story about you is that it was only the cows at that time

who got to hear your voice at milking time. Yes I used to sort of rather like Dengol they used

...