Hello, I'm Cresti 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 the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lolley.

My cast away this week is a writer and film director.

He comes from an academic family in Ireland but he always preferred fiction and the cinema to study.

At the age of 25 he published a book of short stories which won two literary awards.

He went on to write plays for television and radio and then made his first film for Channel 4.

Since then it's filmmaking which has dominated his career.

Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, Michael Collins and about to be released, The End of the Affair.

It's just some of the titles that have won him equal acclaim in the commercial world of Hollywood

and in the more well restrained environment of British and of course Irish cinema.

Of making his films he says it's the same as writing a sentence.

They should have both a logic and a truth.

He is Neil Jordan.

How surprised are you Neil that you've become a filmmaker?

Because if I understand you are right you intended all along to be a writer.

Yeah, I did. It's what Irish people did.

You either joined the civil service or you became a teacher or you became one of the great unemployed and unwashed.

Because of your heritage?

It's because I mean traditionally I suppose it was not a very wealthy culture, not a very wealthy place.

When I grew up in the 50s it was very, very downbeat.

The opportunities were totally scarce, nonexistent probably.

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