Margaret Kelly - Miss Bluebell episode artwork

EPISODE · Apr 25, 2026 · 30 MIN

Margaret Kelly - Miss Bluebell

from Desert Island Discs · host BBC Radio 4

This week’s castaway is the dancer and founder of the Bluebell Girls dance troupe, Margaret Kelly. An orphan born in Dublin, she started a career as a dancer at the age of twelve. As a teenager she worked in Germany in the late 1920s and 30s before moving to France. It was there that she formed The Bluebell Girls, a dance troupe which became synonymous with the high life of Paris. She spent the war working with them in Nazi-occupied Paris, hiding her Jewish husband in an attic. In conversation with Michael Parkinson she looks back over her eventful life and career, and chooses her eight favourite records. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: There's No Business Like Show Business by Ethel Merman Book: History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Sir Winston Churchill Luxury: Her first dress worn on stage

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Apr 25, 2026

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Margaret Kelly - Miss Bluebell

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