Actor, compère, producer, and playwright. He also invented and presented the famous BBC radio series "Desert Island Discs" which has been running continuously since 29th January 1942 (having been struck with the notion on the night of Monday 3rd November 1941 as a 27-year-old about to go to bed in his digs in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and writing to the BBC's
Leslie Perowne at the Gramophone Department of Broadcasting House to pitch the idea).