Residents are hosting their very own edition of a popular radio show to raise money for a new lightning conductor for their local church.

Sunday Times journalist, author and environmentalist Brian Jackman from West Milton is the Castaway in a west Dorset edition of Desert Island Discs set to be hosted at St Mary’s Church in North Poorton on Friday, July 21 at 7pm.

Desert Island Discs is a popular radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 which sees guests invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island, where they can choose eight tracks, a book, and a luxury item to accompany them.

The event is being held with BBC permission to raise money for a new lightning conductor for the church, which will protect both the church building and the surrounding thatched buildings and steel roofed farm buildings.

A lightning conductor is a piece of apparatus used to protect a tall building from a lightning strike. A metal rod is mounted at the very top of a building, like a church spire and is connected to a stake buried in the ground by ribbons made from conductive materials such as copper or aluminium.

Mr Jackman has a ‘very wide’ taste in music, and he was even a member of several bands in the 50s and 60s.

Although his travels have taken him around the world, he is best known as Britain’s foremost writer on African wildlife safaris, but is equally passionate about Dorset, where he has lived since the 1960s.

He is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a trustee of the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust and an ambassador of the Tusk Trust.

Organisers said it will be a ‘very entertaining evening.’

Tickets cost £10 in advance through Bridport TIC or tware@pobroadband.co.uk or are £12 on the door and refreshments will be available after.