Kirsty’s desert island is no walk in the park

NICOLA sturgeon has often urged us to judge her on her record, and for Desert Island Discs she chose Duran Duran, Wham, Eddi Reader, Cilla Black and the Proclaimers. Even without RunRig, that’s one long criminal record.

I’ve always found Desert Island Discs a little creepy; the basic idea of being stuck alone on an island with only eight records, three books including the Bible, plus a luxury item feels like the start of a stephen King novella on how best to poison things you love and turn them into things you hate.

then there’s the way that presenter Kirsty Young, pictured, glides towards quizzing guests about bereavement.

sir Bradley Wiggins’s grandfather, Dame Judi Dench’s husband, Mary Portas’s parents and David Walliams’s suicidal thoughts have all been picked over on the show. It’s a line of inquiry that often feels queasily intrusive; a treasure island hunt for tears, which then gets briskly wrapped up to make way for a clip of Barry Manilow doing Copacabana.

Keith Richard sounded especially unhappy at being prodded for details about the tragic death of his infant son a few weeks ago.

As this week’s castaway Miss sturgeon managed to limit ‘Death-Knock’ Young to discussing a different kind of loss: the referendum defeat in september last year, which left her ‘in floods of tears… totally and utterly devastated’.

she also negotiated Miss Young’s questions about motherhood deftly, and with more candour than the show merited.

Is this really anyone’s business? And how often does her husband Peter Murrell get asked about his biological clock?