Richard Coles and Sian Williams meet TV screenwriter and producer Phil Redmond, hear the story of Addisu Demissie and Junaid Jemal Sendi, two professional Ethiopian dancers and choreographers who used a dance project to move from the harsh streets of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to London's West End, share the sound sculpture of listener Lynn Tolmon who rejoices in the evocative squeak of a Victorian gate latch in Anfield, talk to Sean Enright who was held hostage at gunpoint in a London st...
Oct 27, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with author, playwright and poet Michael Morpurgo, Jane Esuantsiwa Goldsmith who went to Ghana to find her father and ended up being anointed Queen Mother of Akoanso village, Northumbrian dialect poet Raymond Reed, and animal movement coach Peter Elliott. John McCarthy continues his romantic tour of the Wye Valley, best-selling crime writer Peter James takes a stroll through Brighton's dark underbelly and actor and comedian Lenny Henry shares his Inheritance Track...
Oct 20, 2012•1 hr 25 min
On Saturday Live this week the Reverend Richard Coles and Sian Williams talk to broadcaster and comedian Robin Ince about science, art and rationalism, find out how Martin Spinelli coped with the car crash that killed his wife and nearly killed his young son, explore psychiatrist R.D. Laing's experiment at the Kingsley Hall commune in the 1960's with a patient who spent 4 years there, reunite a former policeman with his former police Ford Cortina, travel with John McCarthy along the Wye Valley- ...
Oct 13, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Richard Coles and Sian Williams with performer Jackie Clune, Rob Manuel who turned carnivore after 15 years of vegetarianism, Courtney Stewart who is turning the New Testament into Jamaican, and Sylvia Hillier and Jenni Evennett who as teenagers hopped on board the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour bus. JP goes stargazing with comedian and impressionist Jon Culshaw, and plays conkers with poet Luke Wright, John McCarthy explores Thorpeness and Ralph McTell shares his Inheritance Tracks. Producer: Di...
Oct 06, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Richard Coles and Sian Williams meet author and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz, talk to Dolores O'Reilly who grew up signing for her deaf and mute parents, rack their brains with Italian memory man Gianni Golfera, and get rhyming with National Poetry Day founder William Sieghart. There's a Thing About Me feature about the UK's oldest working computer and an appreciation of spiders from Lawrence Bee of the British Arachnological Society. John McCarthy explores Martello Towers on the East coast of ...
Sep 29, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with cook and food historian Clarissa Dickson Wright, Daniel Bond and Stacey Drinkwater who can't afford a house so they live on a double-decker bus, Linda Cruse who experienced a bout of blindness which changed her life, and former Captain of the QE2, Nick Bates, who describes life on the ocean wave. There's a Sound Sculpture of a rugby ball from Andy Challis, a paean to the Cornish pasty from Murray Lachlan Young, and John McCarthy on location in Lyme Regis. Plu...
Sep 22, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with studio guest Charlie Higson and the extraordinary transgender love story of Victoria and Emma Cantons. Conservative Michael Ashcroft shows off his medal collection, we debate rites of passage for one mum and her son, the inheritance tracks of former politician Tony Benn and John McCarthy visits Kent! Producer Lisa Jenkinson.
Sep 15, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams and John McCarthy with studio guest Edwina Currie reflecting on her public and personal life, two very different attitudes to burial from Mark Elliott and Wendii Miller, Spanish author Javier Marias who is the literary and literal king of the micronation Redonda, the pros and cons of procrastination from Steve Swift, Talitha MacKenzie on why her song caught on in Serbia, the musings of Mancunians and the Inheritance Tracks of Big Issue founder John Bird. Producer: Harry Parker....
Sep 08, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Suzy Klein and Richard Coles with studio guest Lynda Bellingham. This weekend in 1939 more than 400,000 pets were killed at the outbreak of World Ward Two. We talk to Dr Hilda Kean who's researched this forgotten piece of history. Fifteen years ago Philippe Kahn invented the camera phone which has revolutionised the way we view the world and communicate. Nicholas McCarthy, who has only one hand, talks about his life as a concert pianist, Sally Pearson shares her experience of waking up on the op...
Sep 01, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams & John McCarthy with archaeologist and broadcaster Neil Oliver; Anthony Weir tells the story of his failed attempt to live with a pygmy tribe; open-water swimmer Anne Marie Ward reveals her plans to swim the Bering Straits; Alison describes her experience of living with face-blindness; Jackie Palmer explains why she loves the sound of a telephone exchange; a group of former Spitfire pilots share their wartime memories, and actress Emma Thompson shares her Inheritance Tracks. Pr...
Aug 25, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Richard Coles & John McCarthy with actress Tamsin Greig; listener Lalage Cambell who sealed a friendship thanks to a washed-up wallet; Sally Becker, aka the Angel of Mostar, who carried the Olympic flag at the Opening Ceremony; Sophie and Louis Staley who organised their parents' wedding; and Dan Fox who sprang his friend from a Kabul gaol with the aid of a kipper tie. We meet the 90 year old Tottenham barber whose shop was trashed during last year's riots, JP Devlin gets a tour of The Kinks...
Aug 18, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Richard Coles & John McCarthy with broadcaster Joan Bakewell; listener Kirsteen Steel who turned detective to recover her father's stolen submarine bell; Jeremy Marks who in the 1980s ran a course to help gay people suppress their sexuality; moon rock investigator Joe Gutheinz; Olympic cycling pace setter Peter Deary; JP Devlin talks to the last surviving crew member of the Enola Gay which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; there's a poem from the Edinburgh Festival; and agony aunt and au...
Aug 11, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams & Richard Coles live from the Olympics with newsman turned novelist Gerald Seymour, and James Partridge who founded of the disfigurement charity Changing Faces; JP Devlin mingles with the Olympic crowds; archer Tony George sets us aquiver with his Sound Sculpture; listener Arnold Gordon tells the tale of singing along to Over The Rainbow with Judy Garland in a bar during the Tokyo Olympics; John McCarthy gets out his bucket and spade in Weymouth; and Olympic athlete turned poli...
Aug 04, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Suzy Klein and Richard Coles with boxer Barry McGuigan. Radio 4's Zeb Soanes on his path to recovery after suffering a paralysed vocal chord. Inheritance Tracks from Leo Sayer, update from Hazel Parry on her trip to the Congo where her parents were murdered in the sixties. Foundling Andrew Rowan on finding out about his roots and making contact with his half brother Ronnie Finlayson, a guerrilla report on the tattoo industry, John McCarthy takes a barge on the Trent and Mersey canal, World Open ...
Jul 28, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with paralympian Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson; former beautician Georgina Blackwell who took on a local legal battle and has just graduated with a First in Law; Azzy B who is now friends with the boy he used to bully; Peggy Chadwick who secretly took the place of her twin sister in the choir at the closing ceremony of the 1948 Olympics; John McCarthy goes punting in Cambridge; Anne Jones explains why a snuff box is the thing about her; Michael Turner describes how he'...
Jul 21, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with artist Grayson Perry; John McCarthy in revolutionary France; Ruth Ellis' nephew Mick Shepherd; JP Devlin meets naturist Emma James; Chris Tribe's Sound Sculpture of a hand-plane; Sylvie Dare's story of being rescued from a plane crash as a baby; Olympic Black Power athlete John Carlos' Inheritance Tracks. Producer: Lisa Jenkinson.
Jul 14, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams & Richard Coles with commentator and classicist Mary Beard; Namira Salim who's set to be one of the world's first space tourists; Phillippa Yaa De Villiers who was born mixed-race but brought up as white in apartheid South Africa; listener Owen Ephraim who worked with Alan Turing at Bletchley Park; John McCarthy goes biking with travel writer Ted Simon; JP Devlin meets cave collector Jim Gardner; listener Sally Townsend explains why a red fox fur coat is the thing about her; an...
Jul 07, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams & Richard Coles with author and arts champion Sir Christopher Frayling, Steve Marsling and Sean Hosey tell the story of their lives as undercover ANC recruits; listener Rupert Horrox describes how he chanced on a film set and ended up on the red carpet; listener Gail Simmons delivers a Soundsculpture about an iron; John McCarthy reveals more of Gran Canaria; JP Devlin goes on a Daytrip with broadcaster and food critic Giles Coren; and actress, model and lion-keeper Tippi Hedren...
Jun 30, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams & Richard Coles with the BBC's Business Editor Robert Peston, artist and designer David Gentleman, Claire Guest who trains dogs to sniff out a range of diseases including cancer and Bomber Command pilot Frank Dell who was shot down behind enemy lines in WW2; John McCarthy watches cricket with comedian Miles Jupp, Uri Geller reveals his secret life, and writer and actress Meera Syal shares her Inheritance Tracks. Producer: Lisa Jenkinson.
Jun 23, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams & Richard Coles with classicist and comedian Natalie Haynes; Mark Lawson and JP Devlin breakfast in Dublin for Bloomsday; Julie Wassmer who discovered the daughter she'd given up for adoption by quite extraordinary coincidence; Dominic Walker, The Bishop of Monmouth, who conducts exorcisms; Susan Richards who was inspired by a damp June village fete to send a million books to Russia; there's a Dublin Crowdscape and former Chancellor Norman Lamont's Inheritance Tracks. Plus the ...
Jun 16, 2012•1 hr 24 min
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with actor and comic Stephen Mangan; Jackie Malton, the retired Detective Chief Inspector who was the inspiration for Prime Suspect's Jane Tennison; ex-cricketer David Gower reveals his secret life, a love of bats; John McCarthy discovers the deserted beaches and overlooked attractions of Gran Canaria; Beryl Ritchie, one of the few female record cutters of the 1970s, remembers creating the first 12'' single in the UK; Tyeisha Litambola, whose brother was killed in...
Jun 09, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams & Richard Coles with founder of the Eden Project Tim Smit, a brother and sister returning for the first time to the Congo where the rest of their family was massacred in 1964, a couple who spent 12 years and £35,000 trying to have a baby, a caricaturist turned amateur scientist who's trying to prove that people who look the same also sound the same, John McCarthy as a tourist in Beirut, a gathering of Victoria Cross recipients, Coronation memories and a Jubilee Crowdscape from ...
Jun 02, 2012•1 hr 26 min
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with writer and broadcaster Bamber Gascoigne, a woman dubbed 'The Angel of Mostar' who was reunited via Facebook with the baby she saved 20 years before, the funeral director decorated for his service to fallen soldiers, a real life Billy Elliot from Warrington who's off to the Bolshoi ballet school, John McCarthy returns to Beirut, a Thing About Me feature about a chopper bike, and boxer Sugar Ray Leonard's Inheritance Tracks. Producer: Lisa Jenkinson....
May 26, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with historian Peter Hennessy, John McCarthy on Canvey Island with Dr Feelgood's Wilko Johnson, Sheri Pitman a young woman who went through school refusing to speak, Tony Walker a 56 year old man whose life has been documented on TV since he was seven, Kevin Allmond the Yorkshire businessman who has become the Baron of a small European principality, a Crowdscape from Reading, The UK representative for the Pacific Island of Nauru Martin Weston makes a plea for Naur...
May 12, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with 1970's pop mega-star David Cassidy; writer Jane Johnson who got lost in the Atlas mountains in Morocco and ended up marrying the Berber tribesman who rescued her; actor Patrick Duffy (aka Dallas' Bobby Ewing) who describes his love of caravanning; translator Mary Hobson who took a degree in Russian in her sixties and, now in her 80s, is winning awards for her version of Pushkin; John McCarthy reveals some secrets of the Paris metro; Chris Purkiss who lost her...
May 05, 2012•1 hr 25 min
Anita Anand with "The Idler" editor Tom Hodgkinson, gay dads Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow talk about their decision to have a sixth child by a surrogate mother, Emma Gray on her life as a shepherdess, poetry from Matt Harvey, Caroline Cornish tells the story of her daughter's red dress, Jacquie Meredith explains how she was adopted by a stray cat, and former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway's Inheritance Tracks Producer: JP Devlin.
Apr 28, 2012•57 min
Richard Coles with musician and activist Billy Bragg, poet Murray Lachlan Young, Prof Harry Rothman, son of Benny Rothman, the leader of the Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout to mark the 80th anniversary of the climb that won our generations' right to roam, Simon Wheatcroft an blind ultra-marathon runner, a feature about a homeless man from London, James Bowen, who was adopted by a cat and now they're constant companions, and Adrian Mole author Sue Townsend's Inheritance Tracks. Producer: Rachel Sim...
Apr 21, 2012•57 min
Richard Coles with food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis, David Gollancz, who discovered he's one of the 600 children fathered by a British scientist's sperm donations and Moss Hills, who's been on board two different ships as they've sunk. There's poetry from Aoife Mannix, a sound sculpture featuring the unforgettable sound of the iconic 2CV engine, Inheritance Tracks from Nicholas Parsons and news of what's thought to be the furthest flung highland games in the world.
Apr 14, 2012•57 min
Anita Anand with author Jeanette Winterson, poet Mr Gee, young taxidermist Polly Morgan and urban birder David Lindo. Plus a crowdscape from the Welsh town of Carmarthen, Inheritance Tracks from 80s pop star Howard Jones and listener Sir George Pollock remembers taking part in a ski jump on Hampstead Heath in London in the 1950s.
Apr 07, 2012•57 min
Richard Coles with Jarvis Cocker, poet Elvis McGonagall, Zuhal Sultan who taught herself to play the piano and set up the Iraqi Youth Orchestra, Garret Smyth who's planning to cryogenically preserve his brain at the point of death in the hope of the being brought back to life, Anne Pattullo who hitched a ride with Salvador Dali, Piers Plowright's I Was There from a ski jumping competition in the middle of London in the 1950s, and the Inheritance Tracks of actor Roger Lloyd Pack. Producer: JP Dev...
Mar 31, 2012•57 min
