Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast
from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury,
that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast,
but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds.
Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else.
I hope you enjoy listening.
My cast away this week is the actor David Morrissey.
For over 40 years, he's been a welcome presence on our screens, playing everything from a ruthless survivor
of the zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown in The Deal.
He starred in stories set everywhere from Britannia's Roman Empire to James Graham's Sherwood.
If there is a common thread in his work, it may be an examination of masculinity.
His characters are often men struggling to maintain the facade they present
to the world as they wrestle with inner turmoil, whether it's a buttoned-up headmaster
in recent murder mystery Gone or hapless grandfather-to-be Malcolm in the BBC comedy Daddy Issues.
He was born in Liverpool, a city that he says took the arts seriously.
The famous Everyman Theatre's youth programme embraced him during a tumultuous time in his teenage years.
And from then on, he declared his intention to become an actor to anyone who would listen.
He says, "I did what you're not supposed to do and put all my eggs in one basket.
But I looked after that basket." David Morrissey, welcome to Desert Island Discs.