Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the broadcaster Bob Harris, known affectionately as

whispering Bob he's rarely been off our airwaves in the past 44 years. His big break came standing in for

John Peel and he was so good that not long after he was given his own show on

radio one. Throughout the 70s he also hosted the true music fans must see show the old grey whistle test

his beard and tank top were almost as legendary as some of the guests.

The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and John Lennon were among the lineup. However, with the arrival of punk, things

got personal and not in a good way. The closest his family ever got to showbiz was when his dad,

a policeman, clambered on stage to arrest the singer PJ Probee when his dad a policeman clambered on stage to arrest the singer PJ Proby when his trouser

split and young Bob did for a while follow his dad into the force but he couldn't stick at it.

Music above all else radio were his obsession. Much like his

recording heroes his own life has something of the rock and roll vibe, three wives,

eight children, a spell of bankruptcy and coping with cancer.

Yet through it all, his skill, knowledge and love of broadcasting has always endured.

He says, I'm a music anorac, a fan who got lucky.

From the moment I bought my first record, aged 11,

I couldn't wait to share music with others.

And the fan who got lucky, when we talk lucky,

we should probably just define how lucky.

You've been right at the center of a kind of who's who of rock, really.

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