Desert Island Discs: Archive: 2016-201815 Heinä 2018

Billie Jean King

Billie Jean King won 39 Grand Slams and a total of 20 Wimbledon titles and is regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

Born in California in 1943, she was the eldest daughter of Bill and Betty Moffitt. She discovered tennis at the age of ten: at 15 she won in her age bracket at the Southern California championships, and in 1961, she won the women’s doubles at Wimbledon with Karen Hantze, the youngest pair to achieve such a victory.

In 1968, when professional competitors were admitted to Grand Slam tournaments, she won Wimbledon for the third time and was paid just £750 while Rod Laver, the Men's champion, took home £2,000. So began her campaign for gender equality, which involved boycotting tournaments and setting up their own professional women’s circuit. In 1973, then aged 29, she beat the 55-year-old former tennis champion Bobby Riggs in a match which became known as 'The Battle of the Sexes': it remains the most-watched tennis match ever. That year the US Open awarded the same financial reward to men and women and in 2007 Wimbledon followed suit. Billie Jean also founded the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation in the 1970s.

She married her husband, Larry, in 1965 but by the late 1960s, she had realised that she was gay. She was outed by a former lover who sued her for palimony in 1981, and although she won the case, she lost almost all her commercial endorsements. She has been with her partner, Ilana Kloss, for nearly 40 years and retired from singles matches in 1983 and doubles in 1990. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2009 and has continued to be an ambassador for her sport and for gender equality.

Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Cathy Drysdale

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Jaksot(126)

John Timpson

Kirsty Young's castaway is the businessman, John Timpson.He is chairman of his eponymous high street retailers and the business is in his blood: started by his great-grandfather in 1865 it is now run ...

27 Maalis 201635min

Gloria Steinem

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer, feminist & activist, Gloria Steinem.At the forefront of the second wave of feminism, she came to prominence after publishing an article entitled "After Black Pow...

20 Maalis 201636min

Yinka Shonibare

Kirsty Young's castaway is the artist Yinka Shonibare MBE.His work has populated museums around the globe, with a vivid, subversive and often tragi-comic presence; exploring themes of cultural identit...

13 Maalis 201633min

Dr Dame Sue Ion

Kirsty Young's castaway is the engineer and nuclear scientist Dr Dame Sue Ion.The first woman to be awarded the highly prestigious President's Medal by the Royal Academy of Engineering, she has worked...

6 Maalis 201634min

Hugh Bonneville

Kirsty Young's castaway is Hugh Bonneville.Known around the world for his portrayal of Lord Grantham in ITV's hugely popular Downton Abbey, he made British audiences laugh with his portrayal of the ha...

28 Helmi 201636min

Dame Zaha Hadid

Kirsty Young's castaway is the architect, Dame Zaha Hadid.The first woman to be awarded architecture's highest honour, the Pritzker Prize, she designed the Aquatic Centre for London 2012, Glasgow's Ri...

21 Helmi 201634min

Ben Saunders

Kirsty Young's castaway is the polar adventurer Ben Saunders. In his own words he "specialises in dragging heavy things around cold places".He's one of only three people to have skied solo to The Nort...

14 Helmi 201635min

Professor Dame Carol Black

Kirsty Young's castaway is Professor Dame Carol Black.She is Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, and is a special adviser to the Department of Health and Public Health England. She is also Chair ...

7 Helmi 201637min