Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey,

history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I'm Krista 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 2009.

My question My castaway this week is the comedian and actor Steve Coogan.

In recent years, he's found success in films,

in roles as diverse as the 18th century fictional man of letters Tristram Shandy to Manchester's best-known pop improsario

Tony Wilson. He was a child when he realised he had a knack for impressions, and he first made a name

for himself on spitting image. But he's best known for creating the grotesque Alan Partridge,

a character so crass he had us peering at the telly through our fingers in mortified horror.

Although his work has been very varied, it seems precious little about his career has been left a chance.

He was still a teenager when he started planning his future success.

I remember being in the sixth form one day, he says, having this moment of clarity, thinking

there's a generation of future comics out there, all around the country, people who have no

idea right now that they will be part of that generation. So why can't I be part of it? Other people

out there don't know it's going to happen to them, but I'm going to see if I can make it happen to me.

That seems extraordinary,

Steve Coogan, that as early as you were sort of late teenage years, you were in the common room, were you when you had that thought? Yeah, I remember it very clearly because I started thinking

about all the people I admired on television, all the creative people I admired, and one always

thinks that whoever's around now is that's going to be the status

...