Has Desert Island Discs dumbed down?

IS DAVID Beckham really the best the BBC can do for its Desert Island Discs 75th anniversary? And is simpering Kirsty Young the right person to be in charge any longer? It really is a shame the programme is only ‘make believe’ as I truly feel the vast majority of sane people would like nothing more than to have this dimwitted ex-footballer, his awful wife and the rest of his tribe given a desert island as first prize in this programme, to disappear and not be heard of ever again. Could we be that lucky?

BRIAN BLAKE, Maidstone, Kent. IS IT just a coincidence that the Beckhams manage to get their name in the papers just as a main event happens which threatens to outshine them in the news for a few days? They, and their children, have been in the news just about every day for the past few weeks. I don’t suppose this has anything to do with him not getting his expected knighthood? recently, I was watching the film Escape To Victory on TV and saw Pele and Bobby Moore — now they really were legends, with Moore a World Cup winner. Was he not worthy of a knighthood? How much longer is Beckham going to rest on his laurels? In the end, he will be remembered not for his playing but only for his ‘brand Beckham’ advertising.

DANA PERRIN, Ticehurst, Sussex. BECKHAM on Desert Island Discs’ 75th-anniversary edition is a big fuss about nothing. MP Bill Cash suggests the BBC should have picked ‘a Nobel Prize winner, great author or cultural icon’. Leaving aside Beckham’s status, rightly or wrongly, as a cultural icon, this attributes inordinate gravity to an arbitrary minor landmark. Just because 75 is three-quarters of 100 (itself a round figure of debatable importance), it doesn’t follow that it’s especially significant or warrants endorsement by one of society’s titans. The 50th anniversary item set a precedent for unremarkable castaways by featuring politician John Major, but 75 is no more meaningful than, say, 73, 61 or 38. And, with thousands of archive editions of the show available on the BBC iplayer, the order of the original broadcasts is decreasingly relevant.

FRANCIS HARVEY, Bristol.