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DESERT ISLAND DISCS REVISITED: BRIT AWARD WINNERS - NEIL TENNANT (320kbs-m4a/97mb/42mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 9th February 2025
Singer and songwriter Neil Tennant is castaway by Kirsty Young.
Neil is best known as one half of The Pet Shop Boys which, over the past 20 years, has been one of Britain's most successful and popular bands, noted for combining dance music with witty lyrics and delivering them in a uniquely English style.
As a teenager growing up in Newcastle upon Tyne, he felt himself to be an outsider at school, but found friends in an amateur theatre company. Yet he always felt his life would be different to theirs and used to tell them that he would become a celebrated pop star.
But Neil was 30 when he finally left his day job as a writer for Smash Hits magazine to pursue the musical interests that had dominated his life since he was a teenager. By that time, he was anxious that he had missed the boat.
Now, as well as continuing to release records with The Pet Shop Boys, he has branched out into other forms of composition,.
He's written a live score for the film Battleship Potemkin, a West End musical and has collaborated with Robbie Williams and the Scissor Sisters, amongst many others.
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Dusty Springfield - I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore
BOOK CHOICE: The Human Comedy - Honore de Balzac
LUXURY CHOICE: DVD projector and DVDs
Producer: Leanne Buckle
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 2007.
Rex Harrison - Why Can't The English?
The Beatles - She Loves You
Sinfonia of London Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli - Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia On A Theme by Thomas Tallis
David Bowie - Changes
Shannon - Give Me Tonight
Billie Holiday - Good Morning, Heartache
Dusty Springfield - I Don't Want To Hear It Anymore
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein - Dmitry Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 in D minor (1st movement)
THIS CULTURAL LIFE - 22. NEIL TENNANT (320kbs-m4a/97mb/42mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 16th April 2022
Neil Tennant, singer and songwriter with the Pet Shop Boys, is one half of the most successful British pop duo of all time, having sold 100 million records worldwide. With his musical partner of over 40 years, Chris Lowe, Neil Tennant is known for wry, observational lyrics set to electronic dance beats and bittersweet melodies. They've made 14 studio albums, all of them with one word titles - from Please and Actually in the 80s, to Super and Hotspot in recent years.
Neil Tennant tells John Wilson about his most important cultural influences. He joined the Young People's Theatre in his native Newcastle in the 1960s, the start of a lifelong passion for drama and live performance. He recalls buying an acoustic guitar at the age of 11 and writing his first ever songs. David Bowie was a huge influence on Neil, having seen the legendary Ziggy Stardust show at Newcastle City Hall in in 1972. He later collaborated with his hero when Pet Shop Boy remixed the Bowie track Hallo Spaceboy in 1996. Neil also recalls the social and cultural influence of Heaven nightclub in the early 1980s, the centre of London's gay scene, where he first heard the work of producer Bobby Orlando and other pioneers of electronic dance music.
Producer: Edwina Pitman
THE FIRST TIME WITH... SERIES 1 - 17. NEIL TENNANT (320kbs-m4a/132mb/58mins)
BBC Radio 6 Music broadcast: 16th November 2017
Neil Tennant discusses his musical milestones with Matt Everitt - from Smash Hits to Greatest Hits. First broadcast in 2010.
Pet Shop Boys - Go West
Pet Shop Boys - Did You See Me Coming?
The Beatles - The Fool On The Hill
Sandie Shaw - Girl Don't Come
David Bowie - Five Years
The Incredible String Band - October
Kraftwerk - Computer Love
Isao Tomita - The Girl With The Flaxen Hair
Donna Summer - I Feel Love
The Flirts - Passion
Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield - What Have I Done To Deserve This?
Pet Shop Boys - Can You Forgive Her?
Electronic - Getting Away With It...
Pet Shop Boys / David Bowie - Hallo Space Boy
Pet Shop Boys - Together