Libby Purves meets Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman; writer Rex Pickett; writer and academic Bella Merlin and performer Natalie James. Bella Merlin is an actor, writer, and professor of acting and directing at the University of California, Riverside. In her book, Facing the Fear, she draws on her own and other actors' personal experiences to address the issue of stage fright and how the complex relationship between the actor and the audience affects the condition. Drawing on neurological research,...
Jun 08, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets biologist and stand-up Simon Watt; motoring journalist Martin Gurdon; hip-hop artist Baba Israel and journalist Cal Flyn. Martin Gurdon is a motoring journalist. In his book, An Estate Car Named Desire, he recounts tales of his car-obsessed childhood in the 1960s - a lost world of Ford Anglias, Triumph Heralds and Morris Minors. During his dysfunctional years at boarding school cars were both his salvation and his undoing. An Estate Car Named Desire - A Life on the Road is pub...
Jun 01, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets poet and artist Frieda Hughes; composer Christopher Gunning; puppeteer Ronnie Le Drew and horticulturalist and gardening judge Jim Buttress. Ronnie Le Drew is a puppeteer. Over his long career he has operated Muffin the Mule, Sweep and Zippy from the children's television series Rainbow. He discovered puppetry as a small boy, performing glove puppet shows for his friends on the south London council estate where he grew up. His biography Zippy and Me, written with Duncan Barret...
May 18, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets wine writer Oz Clarke; photographer Johnny Fenn; playwright Brian Mullin and Emma Sherlock, curator of free-living worms at the Natural History Museum. Emma Sherlock is senior curator of annelids - free-living worms - at the Natural History Museum. She's also co-founder and president of the Earthworm Society of Great Britain. A zoology graduate, she is passionate about changing the public's perception of the humble earthworm. Her current project is studying the Asian worms in ...
May 11, 2016•42 min
The poet Lemn Sissay meets naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham; singer and songwriter Ralph McTell; actor and director Ian Ogilvy and paleoanthropologist and stand-up comedian Ella Al-Shamahi. Ian Ogilvy is an actor who is best known for playing Simon Templar in the 1970s TV series The Return of the Saint. He has also appeared in Upstairs Downstairs, I Claudius and films including No Sex Please, We're British. He has written a series of children's books about his hero, Measle Stubbs, which ...
May 04, 2016•41 min
Libby Purves meets singer and songwriter Chris Rea; artist Chris Dobrowolski; former railway detective Graham Satchwell and actor Rosa Hoskins, daughter of Bob. Chris Dobrowolski is an artist and sculptor who spent three and a half months in Antarctica as artist in residence for the British Antarctic Survey. Chris lived and worked alongside scientists, medical professionals, researchers and crew members. Armed with boxes of Antarctic-themed toy figures, including plastic penguins, he set out acr...
Apr 27, 2016•41 min
Libby Purves meets writer Hunter Davies; artistic director Daniel Evans; poet Henry Normal and forager and cook Fiona Bird. Fiona Bird is a forager, writer and cook. A former finalist on Masterchef, her new book Let Your Kids Go Wild Outside is full of enthusiasm for the natural world and aims to encourage children to get off the sofa and explore the great outdoors. Fiona lives on the Isle of South Uist where she forages for seaweed which she features in a range of dishes from casseroles and sou...
Apr 20, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets actor Maureen Lipman; writer and comedian Paul Whitehouse; tightrope walker Chris Bull and farmer Desmond MacCarthy. Chris Bull - otherwise known as Bullzini - is a funambulist or tightrope walker. He is recreating the tightrope walk of Carlos Trower, The African Blondin, at A Day at the Lake in Staffordshire. Trower walked across the lake 100 feet above the water in 1864 and again in 1878, drawing huge crowds 30 years after the abolition of slavery in the UK. Chris first beca...
Apr 13, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets poet Wendy Cope; performer Julian Clary; poet Patrick Deeley and actor and playwright Carmen Aguirre. Wendy Cope OBE is a poet. A former teacher and television critic, she has written on a variety of topics including education, romance, religion, television and psychoanalysis. She has been commissioned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to write poems to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the playwright's death. In 2011 she donated her archive of correspondence and diaries to...
Apr 06, 2016•42 min
Nick Davies is professor of behavioural ecology at the University of Cambridge and an expert on cuckoos. Based at Wicken Fen, the National Trust reserve in Cambridgeshire, Davies has unravelled some of the key mysteries of this trickster of the bird world using stuffed cuckoos and dummy birds eggs. Cuckoos are so swift in laying their eggs (only one is laid per nest and the process is over in as little as 10 seconds), and so clever at disguising their eggs, that host birds are often uncertain wh...
Mar 30, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets actor and writer Meera Syal; writer and director James Runcie; former soldier Elliot Ackerman and Philip Hoare, author, broadcaster and whale chaser. Philip Hoare is a writer and broadcaster. He narrates Chasing the Whale, a show inspired by the 19th century journeys of whaling ships from Britain to the South Seas. Philip's stories delve into the log books of history to tell of the dangers and hardships endured by the crews on their epic voyages. The author of the award-winnin...
Mar 23, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets Richard Hines whose story inspired the novel A Kestral for a Knave; novelist Fay Weldon; cartographer John Hessler and actor Ed Zephyr. John Hessler is a specialist in modern cartography at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. He is the founder of the Scaling Lab, a geographical and mathematical collective that uses the theory of complex networks to study geographical and network phenomenon and he has written on data visualization, map design and the foundations of geogra...
Mar 16, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets commentator Henry Blofeld; clarinettist Emma Johnson; journalist Davis Miller and Pedro Algorta who survived a notorious plane crash in 1972. Davis Miller is a journalist who struck up a 30-year friendship with the heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali. He is co-curator of the exhibition, I Am The Greatest, at London's O2, which showcases Muhammad Ali's life. The exhibition features more than 100 artefacts and rare personal memorabilia including a full size boxing ring and gold boxin...
Mar 09, 2016•41 min
Libby Purves meets shepherd James Rebanks; Helen Scott from the Three Degrees; journalist Caitriona Palmer and American tenor Carl Tanner. James Rebanks is a shepherd, known to his followers as the Herdwick Shepherd. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. In his book, The Shepherd's Life, he writes about a shepherd's year, giving an account of rural life and the connection ...
Mar 02, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets veterinarian and barrister Charles Foster; presenter and writer Janet Ellis; journalist Nina Myskow and comedian Sarah Kendall. Sarah Kendall is an award-winning comedian and writer. Born in Newcastle, New South Wales in Australia, she is a regular cast member of Clare in the Community on BBC Radio 4 and a frequent guest on the Now Show. A Day in October, her new show, takes audiences back to a pool party she attended in 1990 with disastrous consequences. Sarah Kendall: A Day ...
Feb 24, 2016•42 min
Due to scheduling changes this episode will be broadcast on Radio 4 at 21:30. The full length programme is available online from February 17 2016. Libby Purves meets playwright Rob Askins; actor Mark Lockyer, neuroscientist and stand-up comedian Dean Burnett and cattle warden Ellie Crossley. Rob Askins is a writer and playwright. His play, Hand To God, is a semi-autobiographical story about his teenage years growing up in a small Texas town and attending a church puppet school. Hand To God, is d...
Feb 17, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets writer and director Sally Wainwright; writer Erwin James; comedian Abi Roberts and author Angela Kiss. Abi Roberts is a stand-up comedian. She is performing her new show, Anglichanka - meaning Englishwoman - in Moscow. She says she's the first UK comedian to perform in Russia - in Russian. The show is based on the story of her adventures in Moscow during the 1990s when she was studying opera at the Conservatoire and became a member of the Russian Orthodox Church. Anglichanka i...
Feb 11, 2016•42 min
Lemn Sissay meets broadcaster and writer Dame Joan Bakewell; micro sculptor Willard Wigan; choreographer Gary Clarke and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Willard Wigan MBE is a micro sculptor. He creates minute pieces of art, so small they are almost invisible to the naked eye and can only be viewed through a microscope. His materials range from spiders' webs to grains of sand. His latest exhibition, Homecoming, reflects his view of the Black Country where he grew up and features his latest wo...
Feb 03, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets broadcaster Griff Rhys Jones; concert pianist Mona Golabek; playwright Lee Tannen and horticulturalist Marcelo Sellaro. Lee Tannen is an author and playwright. He has written a play based on his memoir, I Loved Lucy, about his friendship with the legendary comedienne, Lucille Ball. He met her as a 10-year-old and became her close friend and companion until her death in 1989. I Loved Lucy is at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London. Mona Golabek is a concert pianist who tells her m...
Jan 27, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets novelist Gerald Seymour; adventurer and comedian Tim FitzHigham; writer Amy Liptrot and costume designer John Bright. Tim FitzHigham is an adventurer, author and comedian. His new show, the Gambler, is on tour and in preparation he has undertaken some idiosyncratic challenges including cooking under ten feet of water. He has established himself as a man who is infamous for tackling endeavours that no one else would dare to. In previous shows he has paddled paper boats down the...
Jan 20, 2016•42 min
Libby Purves meets lyricist Don Black; puppeteer Sue Buckmaster; author Mike Daligan and Her Majesty the Queen's swan marker, David Barber. Sue Buckmaster is a puppeteer and artistic director of children's theatre company Theatre-Rites. Her theatrical lineage stretches back generations - her great-grandfather was a music hall entertainer who juggled on a revolving table while riding a unicycle. Her show, The Broke 'n' Beat Collective, weaves puppetry with hip hop to explore some of the pressures...
Jan 13, 2016•41 min
Libby Purves meets Si King and Dave Myers - also known as the Hairy Bikers; illustrator Michael Foreman; The Honorable Lady Alexandra Shackleton, granddaughter of Sir Ernest Shackleton and George Hinchcliffe with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. Lady Alexandra Shackleton is the granddaughter of Sir Ernest Shackleton. Sir Ernest set up the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, a cross-continent trek that came to be known as the Endurance mission. Endurance departed in August 1914 and by Jan...
Dec 30, 2015•42 min
Libby Purves meets actor Carmen Munroe; composer Denis King and Ralph Montagu, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. Ralph Montagu, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, is the nephew of Elizabeth Montagu who is the subject of a new film - The Honourable Rebel. The film tells the story of Elizabeth - Liza - Montagu and is based on her autobiography. She was a musician, actor, linguist and she was recruited by both the UK and US governments to act as a spy during World War Two . The Honourable Rebel stars Dorothea Myer-...
Dec 23, 2015•42 min
Libby Purves meets crime writer Patricia Cornwell; astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell; musician Simon Nicol and adventurer Benedict Allen. Patricia Cornwell is a writer. Her new novel Depraved Heart features medical examiner Kay Scarpetta who is working on a suspicious death scene when a story involving her niece Lucy demands her investigative skills. Patricia Cornwell has sold over 100 million books. She sold her first novel, Postmortem, while working as a computer analyst at the Office o...
Dec 16, 2015•42 min
Libby Purves meets photographer Don McCullin; Roman Catholic priest Father Ray Kelly; triathlete and coach Fiona Ford and actor Robert Portal. Fiona Ford is a triathlete and coach. In the same week in 2006 she won both World Championship titles at the International Triathlon Union (ITU) and Aquathlon events. Three years ago, while cycling along the London 2012 Olympic bike route, she was hit by a car and badly injured. Doctors told her she would never run again. But thanks to her grit and determ...
Dec 09, 2015•44 min
Libby Purves meets conductor Marin Alsop; producer Sir Michael Codron; designer Wayne Hemingway and comedian Carey Marx. Conductor Marin Alsop is music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra. In 2013 she was the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, returning again in 2015. She will be conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers, presenting music by British composer Judith Bingham, at the Barbican Concert Hall. The concert will also ...
Dec 02, 2015•42 min
Libby Purves meets jewellery designer Stephen Webster; historian Kenneth O. Morgan; conservation biologist Dr Amy Dickman and musician Jyotsna Srikanth. Dr Amy Dickman is a conservation biologist with a particular interest in the maintenance of threatened wildlife populations on human-dominated land and how to resolve human-wildlife conflict. She is director of Ruaha Carnivore Project (RCP), a community-based lion conservation initiative in Tanzania. A former finalist at the Tusk Conservation Aw...
Nov 25, 2015•42 min
Libby Purves meets designer Thomas Heatherwick; chef Michel Roux Jr; entomologist Dr Sarah Beynon and pilot Dorothy Saul-Pooley. Dr Sarah Beynon is an entomologist who has just opened Grub Kitchen, a restaurant with insect dishes on the menu. Based at her bug farm in Pembrokeshire, Grub Kitchen features such delights as cricket falafels and mealworm hummus. Sarah's fascination with the natural world started in childhood - at five she was given her first 'bug box'. In the course of her research s...
Nov 18, 2015•42 min
Libby Purves meets former government minister and broadcaster Michael Portillo; Diana Melly, widow of George with a book about ballroom dancing and bereavement; writer and performer Yang-May Ooi and author and artist Polly Bagnall. At the age of 76, Diana Melly decided to take up ballroom dancing after the death of her husband, George. In her new book, Strictly Ballroom - Tales from the Dance Floor, she sashays through tea dance etiquette, the perils of the Argentine tango and how to stay uprigh...
Nov 11, 2015•42 min
Libby Purves meets historian Thomas Pakenham; actor Janice Connolly; Asfa-Wossen Asserate, the great-nephew of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and ecologist Hugh Warwick. Janice Connolly is an actor and comic who stars in the BBC Radio 2 sit com Barbara Nice, part of the network's Comedy Showcase season. The show is based around her character Barbara, a housewife from Stockport, mother of five and occasional stage-diver. Janice played in a range of punk bands before moving into comedy. She wa...
Nov 04, 2015•42 min
