When it comes to stars of UK comedy, few are more enduring than Jennifer Saunders. Breaking onto the scene in the 80s alongside longtime collaborator Dawn French, she's been making us fall off our sofas laughing for four decades.

All the way back in 1996 Jennifer appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, where she gave an insight into the musical influences which were the soundtrack to her life up to that point. The long-running programme invites guests - or 'castaways' - to select the eight songs they would take with them to a desert island.

Jennifer's selections were unsurprisingly anarchic - from the punk pop, to country, to classical.

8: Emmylou Harris - Amarillo

"I have a great love for country music, or a lot of country music," Jennifer told host Sue Lawley. "Old-fashioned country music, generally."

Emmylou Harris is considered one of the leading voices in country music from the 1970s onwards. Amarillo is from her 1994 album Songs of the West. Jennifer added: "I actually met Emmylou Harris - I was completely starstruck."

7: Elvis Costello - Sweet Pear

Describing Elvis Costello as "One of my favourite singers of all time," Jennifer said: "I've listened to him right from when I was at college up until now. I think he's just terrific."

6: Joni Mitchell - A Case of You

Jennifer said: "I sort of came to Joni Mitchell late. I think I was put off initially - she just looked like a skinny sixth-former with a guitar, which was a nightmare. Now I listen to her an awful lot."

The 1971 track regularly appears on lists of the greatest songs ever written. In 2011 listeners of Desert Island Discs voted it the number one female song of all time.

5: Richard Wagner - Parsifal Prelude

A dramatic swing from folk, this is the opening of a three-act opera by the German composer, and premiered in 1882. Telling a version of the story of the hunt for the Holy Grail, it was the last composition before his death.

"I must say I'm not a fan of the whole of Parsifal," Jennifer said. "I kind of cut off when the singing starts and the big people come on."

4: Janis Joplin - Cry Baby

"I adore Janis Joplin," said Jennifer. "I think there could be no more perfect situation than being completely alone so I could do my Janis Joplin impression on a rock looking out to sea."

3: Blondie - I Didn't Have the Nerve To Say No

From the 1978 album Plastic Letters, Jennifer remembers the song as echoing her young adulthood. "It's from a period when London just felt great," she said. "We were kind of young and we just didn't care, you had nothing to care about."

2: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem in D minor - Lacrymosa

Another big shift from the loud pop of Blondie, Jennifer said: "I'd like to take one majorly sad thing for the time when you just think 'oh there isn't a boat coming' and you can just put it on and imagine that you might be about to die." Unfinished when the Austrian composer died in 1791, it was later completed and premiered the following year.

1: Van Morrison - Moondance

In stark contrast to her previous pick, Jennifer recognised the circumstances of being stranded on a desert island might require something a bit more upbeat. "It's a very happy song," she said.

"It's a very upbeat song, and I think if there's one thing I would require it's something to make me stand up and move." The song is the title track from the Northern Irish singer-songwriter's 1970 album.

When asked to pick one song to save over all the others, Jennifer decided to opt for the Blondie track, saying: "I find it very easy to just sit, and it is a record that might inspire me to get up and do something." Guests on Desert Island Discs - which debuted in 1942 - are also allowed to take a copy of the Bible and the complete works of William Shakespeare with them to the hypothetical desert island - along with another book of their choice, and a luxury.

For her book, Jennifer chose Freya Stark's 1950 autobiography Traveller's Prelude, and for her luxury, the Tribute Heads by sculptor Elisabeth Frink.