Expecting Rain

Desert Island Discs has been running on BBC Radio since 1942. Each week the guest, or "castaway", chooses eight pieces of music they'd take with them to an imaginary desert island. Excerpts of their choices are then played between segments of mostly biographical interview. The programme now has a searchable online database listing the music choices of every guest. So I had a look with Bob in mind and here's what I found:

A Dylan song (sung by the man himself) has been chosen 94 times. Two people (novelist Peter Carey and actor Martin Sheen) chose two songs (Thunder On The Mountain / Idiot Wind and Subterranean Homesick Blues / Knockin' On Heaven's Door respectively) and 90 others (66 men and 24 women) have each chosen one. The first woman to pick Dylan was Red Cross worker Joan Whittington who went with Blowin' in 1970. In 1979 Greek chanteuse Nana Mouskouri chose Girl From The North Country; in 1992, actress Juliet Stevenson picked Shelter From The Storm; two years later, screenwriter Lynda La Plante plumped for Tangled Up In Blue - also chosen in 2006 by current PM (then Leader of the Opposition) David Cameron.

Prior to 1970 - mid-sixties glory days notwithstanding - only three people chose a Dylan song: the first was RSC Director Trevor Nunn (Masters Of War) followed by film director Richard Lester (The Times They Are A-Changin') and Director of Shelter Des Wilson (Blowin' In The Wind), all in 1968. Through the seventies, only eight people chose a Dylan song and through the eighties only nine. In contrast, he was picked 26 times during the nineties, 37 times during the '00s and 9 times (to date) since January 2010. There are probably two distinct factors at work here: first the programme's former bias towards establishment figures with a tendency to favour classical music over popular and second Dylan's all-conquering post-1997 second coming.

The most popular choices are mostly predictable: Blowin' and Tambourine Man have both been chosen eight times; Times and Rolling Stone both six; Don't Think Twice, Just Like A Woman, Lay Lady Lay and Simple Twist are tied on four, with Sad Eyed Lady, Knockin' and Tangled all on three. Arguably the biggest surprise there is Simple Twist, picked by Griff Rhys Jones, Ben Elton, historian Simon Schama and inventor James Dyson in 2001, 1996, 2001 and 1999 respectively. The most striking thing about the list overall is its diversity. An astounding 46 different self-penned Dylan songs have been chosen over the years (also one cover - Let It Be Me - picked in 1999 by screenwriter Richard Curtis). Who else has contributed so prodigiously to our popular culture?

The answer to that, if Desert Island Discs is any guide, is The Beatles. In the general public's Top 100 Desert Island Tracks, Dylan has three entries: Rolling Stone at 25, Tangled at 71 and Tambourine Man at 87. The Beatles have eight. One or more Dylan tracks feature in 92 programmes. The Beatles figure in 251.

Finally, a few random choices: actor James Fox - I Believe In You (1983); musician Alice Cooper - Ballad Of A Thin Man (2010); comedian David Walliams - You're A Big Girl Now (2009); comedian Ricky Gervais - If You See Her, Say Hello (2007); TV chef Keith Floyd - Positively 4th Street (1990); writer Stephen King - Desolation Row (2006); broadcaster Monty Don - Nobody 'Cept You (2006); actor Bill Nighy - Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (2004); musician John Cale - She Belongs To Me (2004); musician David Gilmour - Ballad In Plain D (2003); playwright Willy Russell - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (1994); Bob Geldof - My Back Pages (1992); novelist Kazuo Ishiguro - Tryin' To Get To Heaven (2002); comedian Billy Connolly - Highlands (2001); poet Andrew Motion - Love Minus Zero (1998); actor Jeremy Irons - Make You Feel My Love (2006); TV chef Rick Stein - Stuck Inside Of Mobile (1999); Marianne Faithfull - Highway 61 (1995).

If you're reading these boards, you'd probably want to take a Dylan song. Mine would be You Belong To Me (faded before the dialogue). How about you?

Lay Down Your Weary Tune (from the Carnegie Hall concert in 1963)

Funnily enough a few of my friends recently compiled our own "Desert Island Discs" and Bon featured on somel of em - New Pony, Tambourine Man, Tangled (twice) and One of Us Must Know(andSooner or Later).

Mine was and is and always will be Tangled Up in Blue. I am disgsusted that David Cameroon chose it too. That shouldn't be allowed. If he really does listen to Dylan than he isn't listening hard enough. If he did he'd resign and become a monk.

You made me read all of that, then chose a desert island Dylan song that isn't even a Dylan song?

Thanks.

He chose the 1984 Real Live version though, just to reassure us all that he's still a twat.

Have a look at this thread too!!

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20611&hilit=desert+island

Thanks, Stephen. I've been having a look at folks' "luxuries". A guitar has been chosen 57 times - often by musicians (Clapton, McCartney, Brian May, John Lee Hooker, Tex Ritter, John Williams, Julian Bream, Cliff Richard), but also by Tony Blair, Colin Firth, Charles Dance, James Mason, Martin Clunes, Jon Pertwee, Kenneth Connor, David Attenborough, Greg Dyke, Richard Madeley, Rob Brydon, Eric Idle, Harry Secombe, Max Wall, boxer John Conteh, boxing commentator Harry Carpenter, showjumper Pat Smythe, Daley Thompson, Douglas Adams and Bing Crosby.

Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, Paul Jones (ex Manfred Mann) and five others went with a harmonica (or, in Nighy's case, "a boxed set of blues harps and instruction book"). Desmond Tutu, a man after my own heart, chose "an ice-cream maker (especially for rum and raisin flavour)" with an honourable mention here for Denis Healey's "a very big box of chocolates". Seb Coe, Michael Palin, Paul Merton, David Niven, Michael Caine and fifty-odd other sensible sorts chose a bed (though Sid James, true to form, specified a double).

As for books, I'm not going there (though I noted Clapton's was Barnaby Rudge)...

The recent Morrissey programme is worth checking out, if only to discover just how much of a colossal twat the guy is.

I used to have great respect for David Gilmour.

Maybe he figures that listening to that song over and over is the best possible motivation for finding a way off the island?

He's human and he needs to be loved, just like everybody else does.

I read that he had chosen Tangled Up In Blue and I'll admit I was concerned - Trev, you have set my mind at rest.

I heard that edition and I must say that I agree with you. The fact that he is a vegetarian is enough for me.