Hello, I'm Christy Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

The only surviving edition of this program didn't contain the guest's eight music choices.

So where possible, we've rebuilt the original... contain the guests' eight music choices.

So where possible, we've rebuilt the original show

by using discs from the BBC Gramophone library.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Full details can be found on the Castaways page

on the Desert Island Discs website. The program was originally broadcast in 1981,

and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week our cast away is the writer Jeffrey Archer.

Jeffrey, are you an optimist or a pessimist?

Do you think you're going to be on this island a long time or a short time?

Oh, very short. I shall be off by lunchtime. I really don't want to go on your island at all I would

prefer to disappear around about 12 o'clock if that would suit you.

Oh I hope you're right but just in case you're wrong you better choose

aid records. Is music important to you? Oh yes I enjoy a wide Catholic

taste in music I don't have a great deal of knowledge. Do you make music? No, quite

incapable I don't even dare sing in the bath.

And what about the first record you've chosen?

Well, I'd like to choose a record which for me is contemporary in the sense that the group who

made this did it when I was a young man at Oxford and it's the Beatles

Help I need somebody help not just anybody

help you know I need someone.

...