Pianist’s performance makes Desert Island history

PIANIST Jamie Cullum has made Desert Island Discs history by sitting at the piano and performing three of his favourite songs during the radio show.

It was the first time any guest on the show has played their chosen tracks themselves rather than a recording. None of them were his own songs.

The musician, whose appearance on the show was recorded at the BBC Radio 4 More Than Words Festival in Bristol last weekend, played tracks including Elton John’s Tiny Dancer.

But the 32-year-old refused to take a piano to the mythical island, saying it was “too boring a choice” and instead opted for paper and pencils so he could draw.

Cullum, who is married to former model Sophie Dahl, said he “didn’t entertain” the idea of them getting together when they first met when she sang at a charity concert.

He told Kirsty Young: “I assumed that everyone who met her would fall in love with her so I didn’t necessarily think it would be my place so I played it pretty cool, but I thought she had balls to sing in front of these noisy people drinking tonnes of free drinks.”

The couple married in 2010 and have a daughter.

First broadcast in 1942 from the bomb-damaged Maida Vale studio, Desert Island Discs is one of the BBC’s longest running programmes.

There have been just four presenters of the programme in 70 years – Roy Plomley, Michael Parkinson, Sue Lawley and, since October 2006, Young.

The original premise was “a programme in which a well-known person is asked the question, ‘if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which eight gramophone records would you choose to have with you, assuming of course, that you had a gramophone and an inexhaustible supply of needles?’”.