“He wanted to help": Lauren Laverne on Adolescence star Stephen Graham's "honourable" Desert Island Discs

For presenter Lauren Laverne, her Desert Island Discs guests have provided a rich source of laughter, insight and wisdom – not just recently during her battle with cancer, but during calmer times, too. And some of them, she says, have left a particular mark on her, including Adolescence’s Stephen Graham.

In an exclusive interview with Good Housekeeping, Lauren recalled her chat with the actor and how important their conversation was – to both her and millions of people around the world. “[He] decided he wanted to disclose that he’d once tried to take his own life; he wanted to help others suffering with depression,” she says. “It was a honour to be trusted to tell that story in the right way.”

During the Desert Island Discs interview, Stephen shared how several traumatic events in his life led to a breakdown at the age of 20. Within a few years, his beloved grandmother had died and his mother had given birth to a stillborn child. “I'd been through these few traumatic things and never really grieved,” he explained.

His mother became pregnant again and gave birth to a baby boy the day before Liverpudlian Stephen left home to go to drama school in London. “This beautiful joyous occasion of this little boy coming into my life and mum and pop's life and then me having to leave was kind of a bit difficult," he said. "But when you're 20 you have the world in front of you haven't you, so you try not to focus on that stuff."

He explained that his breakdown was the culmination of the “things that had happened traumatically from my late teens that I hadn't really dealt with or I hadn't come to terms with.” It tragically resulted in a suicide attempt, with Graham trying to hang himself - thankfully, he survived because the rope snapped.

“It was very calculated. I kicked the chair and I heard my nana's voice," he shared. "I know this sounds strange and weird, but this is my truth. I heard my nana's voice and she shouted, 'Stephen' and I thought I'd gone... I just came to and opened my eyes and the rope had snapped, thankfully."

“And then I put a high neck jumper on, one of those zip-up jumpers, and my mum and dad came back and then my mum saw it and she said, "What's that?" I then just really opened up and everything just came out and I said, "I don't know how to cope".

Lauren explained that “it means a lot to be trusted by people who are usually reticent about interviews,” including Stephen, and went on to talk about some of the other guests whose interviews have stayed with her.

“Alan Carr had me in complete hysterics the whole way through, of course, but I’ve often laughed a lot when I thought people’s stories might take us a different way. Nick Cave was a good example of that,” she says.

“It was surreal and enchanting to ask Cher and Steven Spielberg about their formative childhoods. Ian Wright holds a special place in my heart. And then, I get to discover these unbelievable lives that I simply wouldn’t have known about otherwise – Baroness Louise Casey, the Savile Row tailor Andrew Ramroop, forensic botanist Professor Patricia Wiltshire and conservationist Carl Jones.”

Read the full interview in Good Housekeeping’s May issue, on sale now.

Lauren presents on BBC Radio 6 Music (weekdays, 10am-1pm) and hosts Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds (Sundays, 10-11am).