Libby Purves meets Gary Morecambe, son of Eric; novelist Rebecca Gowers; filmmaker Sara Ishaq and photographer and musician Mike McCartney. Gary Morecambe is the son of the legendary comedian Eric Morecombe. To mark the 30th anniversary of Eric's death the play The Man What Brought Us Sunshine - Morecambe, starring Bob Golding as Eric, is on tour. Gary is the author of a series of books about his father and a biography of Cary Grant. The Man What Brought Us Sunshine - Morecambe is touring the UK...
Mar 26, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves meets language enthusiast Benny Lewis; literary critic Professor John Carey; flamenco guitarist Eduardo Niebla and comedian Lynn Ruth Miller. Benny Lewis speaks over ten languages including Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, and Hungarian. As a child he struggled to learn languages at school but in his book, Fluent In 3 Months, he explains how he conquered his lack of skill by mastering a range of learning techniques. His book, Fluent in 3 Months, is published by ...
Mar 19, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves is joined by engineer Sam Etherington; Royal Marine turned actor Cassidy Little; ceramicist Emma Bridgewater and anthropologist and writer Professor Merry 'Corky' White. Sam Etherington recently joined Britain's engineering Hall of Fame for his pioneering work on wave energy. The 24-year-old engineer follows in the footsteps of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, George Stephenson, Barnes Wallace and other great British engineers. Sam came up with his design for a multi-axis wave converter aft...
Mar 12, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves meets Dr Amy Lehman, founder of The Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic; legendary soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa; writer Alex Shearer and champion jockey turned photographer Richard Dunwoody. Dr Amy Lehman is founder and president of The Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic, an NGO which provides medical services to the 12m people who live around the lake. Bordered by four countries - Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia and Burundi - Lake Tanganyika is one of t...
Mar 05, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves meets educationalist Sacha Corcoran; film fans Austin and Howard Mutti-Mewse; writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus and auctioneer David Probert. Sacha Corcoran is the new principal of Dv8 Academy which opens later this year. Based in East London, Dv8 Academy will teach 16 to 18-year-olds - specialising in the creative industries such as music technology, performance, fashion and event management. After a difficult start as a 16-year-old single mother, Sacha turned her life around and has worke...
Feb 26, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves meets plant hunter Tom Mitchell; psychologist Dr Akiko Mikamo; Martin White, professor of theatre at the University of Bristol and comedian Arthur Smith. Tom Mitchell gave up his job as a banker to follow his dream and become a plant hunter. He now travels the world collecting rare and endangered plants which he cultivates from seed to sell from his nursery. He is a galanthophile (a lover and collector of snowdrops) and recently auctioned a new variety of the snowdrop flower - givin...
Feb 19, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves meets primatologist Ben Garrod; Australian Aboriginal actor Jack Charles; musician Clare Salaman and photographer Colin Jones. Ben Garrod is an evolutionary biologist, primatologist and skeleton builder. His new series Secrets of Bones, part of BBC Four's Life Inside Out season, explores the story of the skeleton and vertebrates of every size and shape. In the course of this six-part series Ben investigates how a single, universal body plan - the skeleton - has shaped the animal kin...
Feb 12, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves meets rollercoaster designer John Wardley; novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford; former showgirl and actor Mandy Rice Davies and comedian Mark Lucero. John Wardley is a rollercoaster designer who is behind some of the most famous rollercoasters in Britain including Oblivion and Nemesis. He also devised special effects for five of the James Bond films including Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. As a young boy he was fascinated by illusions, fairgrounds and the mechanics b...
Feb 05, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves meets journalist and writer Dan Hurley; cellist Steven Isserlis; broadcaster and writer Sally Magnusson and registrar Tommy Hanover. Dan Hurley is a science journalist who writes regularly for the New York Times and Neurology Today. In his new book Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power, he tests various cognitive exercises which aim to boost intelligence. The exercises range from learning the Renaissance lute; trying out commercial brain-training programmes and physical t...
Jan 29, 2014•42 min
Robert Powell is an actor who is known for his TV and film appearances in projects ranging from Doomwatch to Holby City and the Italian Job to The Thirty Nine Steps. Nominated for a BAFTA award for his role as Jesus in Franco Zefferelli's Jesus of Nazareth, he has appeared on stage in Alan Bennett's Single Spies and Keith Waterhouse's Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell. This year he plays Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in a new production of Black Coffee, her first play. Black Coffee ...
Jan 22, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves meets Peter Hain MP; art dealer Philip Mould; author Susie Boyt and fly fisherwoman Lilla Rowcliffe. Philip Mould is a gallery owner, international art dealer and writer who has been dealing in antiques from an early age. He started by collecting and selling 18th Century shoe buckles as a boy and moved on to deal in artwork worth tens of thousands of pounds. He co-presents BBC1's Fake or Fortune with Fiona Bruce and is a regular expert on the Antiques Roadshow. Lilla Rowcliffe is a ...
Jan 15, 2014•42 min
Libby Purves goes to the panto in a special programme recorded in the BBC Radio Theatre. She is joined by actor Clive Rowe; comedian Jo Brand; actor and writer Henry Winkler and wig designer Richard Mawbey. Clive Rowe is an actor who has played the pantomime dame at the Hackney Empire on many occasions. In 2010 he appeared as Dame Daisy in Jack and the Beanstalk. In 1997 he won an Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for Guys and Dolls. He is playing King Darius in The Light Prin...
Jan 01, 2014•40 min
Libby Purves meets crossword setter John Halpern; historian and travel writer John Julius Norwich; journalist Mary Kenny and actor Imogen Stubbs. John Halpern is a crossword setter. His work features in the Guardian (under the name Paul), the Financial Times (as Mudd) and the Times (Anon). His new book, The Centenary of the Crossword, starts with the story of Arthur Wynne - a journalist from Liverpool who created the first crossword on December 21 1913. The book includes inside information about...
Dec 18, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets musician Jamie Cullum; Samaritans Sophie Andrews and Pam Blackwood; scientist and writer Professor Richard Dawkins and comedian and actor Greg Davies. Jamie Cullum is a jazz singer and songwriter who has sold over four million albums worldwide. Primarily a vocalist and pianist, he also accompanies himself on guitar and drums. He hosts Radio 2's jazz show and is about to present Piano Pilgrimage, a Radio 4 series in which he explores the piano's place in modern life. His latest...
Dec 11, 2013•42 min
Jo Bell is the first Canal Laureate, appointed by the Poetry Society and the Canal and River Trust to encourage more people to appreciate their local waterways. She has lived aboard her 67ft narrowboat Tinker for a decade, mostly on the canals of the Midlands and North West. She is currently writing new verse inspired by her observations and collating work by other poets who have written about our canals and rivers. Actor June Brown has played Dot Cotton in EastEnders for over 25 years. Her auto...
Dec 04, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets banker come hip-hop artist Jihan Bowes-Little, journalist Thomas Harding, Kangeroo Dundee, Chris 'Brolga' Barns and wine writer Jancis Robinson. Jihan Bowes-Little is a banker by day and Hip Hop artist by night. While working in The City he would be scribbling lyrics at the same time as trading credit derivatives. After attending an Open Mic night, he decided to pursue a career in music, and now performs under the name Metis. He is about to release his debut single, All In on ...
Nov 27, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets former soldier-turned-writer Andy McNab; Cheryl Knight, who is in charge of shoes at the Royal Opera House; author Joseph Boyden and producer John Lloyd. Andy McNab is a former SAS soldier-turned-writer. He was a foundling who joined the infantry with the Royal Green Jackets, progressing to the SAS. In the Gulf War he commanded the Bravo Two Zero patrol and later wrote a book about his experiences. He has just spent the last year as the Reading Agency's literacy ambassador for...
Nov 20, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets cloth merchants Philip Pittack and Martin White; cartoonist Annie Tempest; author Nicholas Shakespeare and singer and songwriter Dillie Keane. Cloth merchants Philip Pittack and Martin White have 120 years of experience in textiles between them and run Crescent Trading. They have been working together as woollen merchants for 25 years and are based in London's Spitalfields which used to be the centre of Britain's rag trade. Last September a fire destroyed their entire stock bu...
Nov 13, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets journalist Andrew Davidson; jazz musician Courtney Pine; actor Rula Lenska and Sikh chaplain Amrik Singh. Andrew Davidson's grandfather Fred was a doctor who served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War. Posted to the Western Front with the 1st Battalion Cameronians, he packed his folding camera alongside his medical equipment and began to secretly document life in the trenches. Andrew's book, Fred's War, gives a rare insight into life on the front line du...
Nov 06, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets conductor John Wilson; lawyer and poet Dan Burt; actor Rita Moreno and Holly Mumby-Croft, mayor of Broughton in Lincolnshire. Conductor and arranger John Wilson formed the John Wilson Orchestra in 1994. The orchestra specialises in authentic performances of classic Hollywood film musical scores including High Society, An American in Paris and Easter Parade. John painstakingly restored many of the original MGM scores which had been lost years before. The John Wilson Orchestra c...
Oct 30, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets Thomasina Lowe, daughter of President Kennedy's official photographer; actor and director Paul Michael Glaser; singer Emily Maguire and writer Harry Ritchie. Thomasina Lowe is the daughter of the late Jacques Lowe, President Kennedy's presidential campaign photographer. Jacques had unprecedented access to the personal and professional life of one of the most charismatic and powerful leaders of the 20th Century. He took over 40,000 photographs of JFK at work and with his family...
Oct 23, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets Sandra Noel, daughter of the filmmaker Captain John Noel who made The Epic of Everest in 1924; director of the National Theatre, Sir Nicholas Hytner; comedian Jack Whitehall and his father Michael, a theatrical agent and Andrea Coleman, co-founder of Riders for Health. Sandra Noel is the daughter of Captain John Noel, the filmmaker behind the newly restored film of the third attempt to climb Mount Everest. The 1924 expedition culminated in the deaths of George Mallory and Andr...
Oct 16, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets pilot Anna Walker; manager of Queens Park Rangers Harry Redknapp; novelist Wilbur Smith and actor and comedian Alexander Armstrong. Anna Walker is a pilot who performs acrobatics and displays at air shows around the world. Born in Brazil, she was six when her father took her up in his plane on the day he got his pilot's licence. At the age of 13 she started gliding and moved on to power flying as a tug pilot. She is the first woman to fly a Hawker Hurricane since the female fe...
Oct 09, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets actor Emma Thompson; record breaker Richard Noble OBE; singer-songwriter Linda Thompson and astronomer Dr Paul Abel. Emma Thompson is an actor and screenwriter. She won an Oscar for her role in Howard's End and as screenwriter for Sense and Sensibility. She grew up in a theatrical family - her father Eric Thompson was an actor, director and writer of The Magic Roundabout. In 2012 she wrote The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the publication...
Oct 02, 2013•42 min
Jacqui Dankworth is a singer and actor. The daughter of Sir John Dankworth and Dame Cleo Laine, Jacqui recently played a jazz singer in American Lulu, a reworking of Alban Berg's opera. Her new album, Live To Love, features jazz, soul and blues-infused original compositions alongside covers of songs by Wayne Shorter, Johnny Mercer and Donny Hathaway. She is also touring the UK. Live To Love is released on Proper Records. Don Bachardy is a portrait artist and former partner of the writer Christop...
Sep 25, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets Fred Astaire's daughter, Ava; wildlife cameraman Doug Allan; writer Michael 'Mini' Cooper with filmmaker Franc Roddam and calligrapher Ewan Clayton. Doug Allan is a wildlife photographer and cameraman. Twice winner of the Polar Medal, he's worked on a range of BBC series including Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet. David Attenborough has described him as 'the toughest in the business.' Doug is touring the UK with his personal recollections of filming in some of the m...
Sep 18, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets Maria Vasquez who fled Pinochet's Chile with her family; former child actor Robert Henrey; survival expert Ray Mears and hip hop artists the Q Brothers. Maria Vasquez came to Britain from Chile as a child with her parents - refugees fleeing General Pinochet's dictatorship. Her father, a supporter of Salvador Allende's government, had been tortured and imprisoned following the 1973 coup. The family settled first in Sheffield and then Rotherham. Maria is the chair of Chile 40 Ye...
Sep 11, 2013•42 min
Mariella Frostrup meets children's author Allan Ahlberg; singer Kiki Dee; writer Nigel McCrery and artist Julie Brook. Writer and former teacher Allan Ahlberg is the author of a series of classic children's picture books including Peepo!, Burglar Bill, Each Peach Pear Plum, and the Jolly Postman. The books were illustrated by his late wife Janet. In his new memoir he writes about his own childhood, growing up in the Black Country in the 1940s. The Bucket - Memories of an Inattentive Childhood is...
Sep 04, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets playwright Mark Ravenhill; former nun turned midwife Eleanor Stewart; spoon maker Barnaby Carder and photographer Stuart Griffiths Playwright and writer in residence at the RSC, Mark Ravenhill has written a new version of Voltaire's classic novel Candide. Ravenhill describes his new play as a response to Voltaire's tale rather than a straight adaptation. Featuring a character called the Dramatist, based on himself, Ravenhill asks the question: Is it possible to be an optimist ...
Aug 28, 2013•42 min
Libby Purves meets actor and comedian Roy Hudd; writer David Harris-Gershon; community reform campaigner Baroness Helen Newlove and cruise ship chaplain Reverend Colin Still. Roy Hudd OBE is an actor, comedian and president of the British Music Hall Society. He narrates a film, Variety of Memories, about Brinsworth House - a nursing home for retired variety performers. Variety of Memories will be screened at Wilton's Music Hall in London as part of celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of th...
Aug 21, 2013•42 min
