Desert Island Discs Revisited: Absent Friends 2025 - Terence Stamp

DESERT ISLAND DISCS REVISITED: ABSENT FRIENDS 2025 - TERENCE STAMP (320kbs-m4a/97mb/42mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 7th December 2025

BBC Radio 4 Extra remembers some of the desert island castaways who we lost in 2025.

Actor Terence Stamp is castaway for the second-time by Sue Lawley.

He originally joined Michael Parkinson in 1987.

Terence Stamp was one of the new group of confident, beautiful, working class young people who came to define the 1960s.

He shared a flat with Michael Caine, dated the actress Julie Christie and the first supermodel Jean Shrimpton. He became an overnight success - and won an Oscar nomination - for his first film role as Billy Budd. He acted alongside Christie in Far from the Madding Crowd and found further fame with roles in The Collector and Modesty Blaise.

He was driven to act after first seeing Beau Geste when he was just a small boy - the cinema offered an escape route from the monochrome world of London's East End.

But when the 1960s ended he found he was offered fewer interesting roles, his relationship with Shrimpton ended and he headed eastwards on a journey of self-discovery.

Now 66, he's suave, still acting and recently married.

Terence Stamp died on 17th August 2025 aged 87.

CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Claudio Arrau - Frédéric Chopin’s Impromptu No.4 in C sharp Minor
BOOK CHOICE: The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
LUXURY CHOICE: One of his wheat-free loaves

Producer: Leanne Buckle

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2006.

Claude Debussy - Clair de lune (from Suite bergamasque) [ASV]
Cole Porter - It's De-Lovely [Verve]
The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Perdido [Fantasy]
Dean Martin - Memories Are Made Of This [Capitol]
Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah [Columbia]
Tim Hardin - If I Were a Carpenter [Polydor]
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower [MCD]
Frédéric Chopin - Impromptu No.4 in C sharp Minor [Philips]