Sandi Toksvig
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.4 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2015
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Sandi Toksvig.
Host of BBC Radio 4's News Quiz until June 2015, she is also a writer and comedian and recently entered the world of politics, helping to found the Women's Equality Party.
Her parents were both broadcasters: her mother worked as a studio manager and announcer before she married, her Danish father's job as a foreign correspondent took the family around the world. Sandi and her siblings spent much of their childhood in the United States and when she was "asked to leave" yet another American school, her parents sent her to boarding school in England. She soon decided to lose her strong American accent and went on to Cambridge, where she performed in the Footlights.
In addition to writing, her most recent acting role was in Call the Midwife and she continues to appear regularly on TV and radio shows as a panelist: she is to start as the next host of QI, taking over from Stephen Fry. She's also Chancellor of Portsmouth University.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast. |
| 0:10.0 | For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:17.0 | Radio 4. My cast away this week is the writer and performer Sandy Toxvig. She is exactly as she should be. |
| 0:39.4 | That is to say that given her father was a well-known witty endlessly curious broadcaster and journalist |
| 0:44.7 | and her mother a BBC pioneer and inveterate globetrotter, their offspring's work, passions, |
| 0:50.0 | interests and |
| 0:54.4 | abilities make complete sense. Her first television appearance was at the age of four. She would later |
| 0:56.2 | ditch the big white hairbow and embrace a working life that has taken in children's books, |
| 1:00.8 | TV comedy shows, travel programs, stage plays, novels, and of course her hugely |
| 1:05.8 | successful chairmanship of the news quiz here on Radio 4. |
| 1:09.9 | Having been busy primarily with making us laugh, she now seems intent upon making us think a |
| 1:14.5 | little more by helping to set up the women's equality party she says I think life is |
| 1:20.1 | endlessly interesting there isn't the time to do all the things I'd like to do. |
| 1:24.2 | I've got a million novels in my head. I've got a million plays in my head. So welcome, |
| 1:29.2 | Sandy Toxfig. Is it true that before any stand-up gig you your warm up is to conduct an |
| 1:35.4 | imaginary orchestra doing at performing Beethoven's ninth it is I haven't a |
| 1:40.1 | musical note in my head sadly but I do love music it makes me feel good and I |
| 1:46.2 | sometimes get an entire audience to stand up and conduct the very end of |
| 1:50.4 | Ode to Joy and we all feel good it's a wonderful feeling it's like being Mickey Mouse in charge of an orchestra |
| 1:56.1 | You once said that your ambition was to stop showing off and to make more jam |
| 2:00.3 | How's that working out for you? I have I've just knitted a rabbit. I enjoyed, in fact I had to say to |
... |
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