Professor Worcester, who lives near Maidstone, heads the Mori market research and polling organisation. He told presenter Sue Lawley that, apart from his business, he enjoyed being involved in many other activities.

"But the thing I get most personal satisfaction out of these days is working as a non-executive director at Medway Hospital," he said. "Because here is a business that is a £100 million business that operates 365 days a year, 24 hours a day in a perpetual state of crisis.

"The decisions they make there are about life and death and we're winning. I read so much negative publicity about the National Health Service and I think: 'That's not my hospital'."

Professor Worcester, who is in his late sixties, was born in America and came to Britain in the late 1960s. His data has been used by prime ministers and business chiefs.

He chose a book about globes as his book, and two globes - terrestrial and celestial - as his luxury. The castaway said he looked forward to his time on a desert island where there would be plenty of opportunity for data analysis.

His choice of music included Dvorak's New World Symphony, Mozart's Requiem, and a piece by the Stan Kenton orchestra to remind him of his university days.

The most controversial moment in the 45-minute programme came when he denied Sue Lawley's suggestion that he was "terrified" after getting the result of the 1992 General Election so badly wrong.

All polling organisations predicted a hung Parliament when in fact John Major's Conservatives won by a seven-point margin.

"You must have been terrified this was the end of everything," said Ms Lawley.

"I wasn't terrified at all Sue," he said.

She said: "You had been proved that you could get it terribly wrong." He came back: "It wasn't terribly wrong. Three or four percentage points is neither here nor there."

But he said: "It was very embarrassing."

He explained the mistake by saying that the 10 years between 1981 - the census date on which 1992 social data was based - and 1991 had shown "a bigger change in the class structure than any decade in 1,000 years of English history."

He said Mori's turnover had gone up immediately after the election, with polling data making up only two per cent of the company's turnover.