Anne Reid joins Aasmah Mir and the Reverend Richard Coles. After becoming a household name as Coronation Street's Valerie Barlow, Anne's varied career has seen her seducing Daniel Craig in The Mother, and playing Celia in Last Tango in Halifax. Now Anne talks about fulfilling another ambition, by singing in her one women show. JP Devlin meets listener Jayne Moore who set up Greensted Hedgehog Rescue in Norfolk. Listener Andrew Morris talks about his science discussion group, which aims to show s...
Nov 14, 2015•1 hr 22 min
Crime writer Ian Rankin joined Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Saturday Live hosted a special auction, offering listeners the chance to bid for some amazing prize packages to raise money for BBC Children in Need. LINES ARE NOW CLOSED - PLEASE DO NOT CALL OR TRY TO BID. There was a Just a Minute VIP Experience, a Today Programme VIP Experience, a Saturday Live VIP Experience and The Infinite Monkey Cage VIP Experience. To tell us about what the lucky winners might experience, Richard Coles and Aasm...
Nov 07, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Sophie Ellis-Bextor first topped the charts with Groovejet (If This Ain't Love) and successes continued with hits including Murder On The Dancefloor and Take Me Home. Sophie joins Aasmah and Richard to talk about her career, taxidermy and reaching the final on Strictly Come Dancing. Ashley Walters found fame as rapper Asher D in So Solid Crew. He's subsequently carved out a successful acting career, including an award winning performance in the film Bullet Boy, and starring roles in Top Boy and ...
Oct 24, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Joining Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles is the actor, writer and comedian Steve Coogan. He has won seven comedy awards, six BAFTAs for his work including The Trip and Philomena, and had a box office number one with Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. He discusses his childhood, comedy career and love of cars, including his mum's Morris Minor Traveller. Deborah Alma, emergency poet, turns up in a 1970s ambulance - not with a suture but a sonnet. In honour of Alan Partridge JP Devlin visits Cromer to meet so...
Oct 17, 2015•1 hr 25 min
He rose to fame playing windmill dwelling magician sleuth Jonathan Creek, but it was quite a departure from his roots in the comedy circuit. Alan Davies has since garnered our sympathy as the fall guy to Stephen Fry's genius in TV quiz QI. But all the while he's never stopped the stand up and he joins us mid tour. When she was only 13 years old, Yeonmi Park fled North Korea for a better life. She survived trafficking, gangsters, extreme hunger and cold, and constant fear. Her speech at the One W...
Oct 10, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Inspired by Blue Peter at the age of three Gaby Roslin's career has taken her from The Big Breakfast to Chicago and the National Lottery Draw. She joins Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir to talk about her life and career on stage and TV. George Dowell dreamed of playing professional football before a car crash left him paralysed from the chest down. The former defender used to play for Worthing FC but he now has a different dream - guiding the club into the football league. JP Devlin meets Allan Char...
Oct 03, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by Sophie Thompson. The award winning actor has appeared in Harry Potter, EastEnders and won celebrity MasterChef in 2014. Sophie talks about how her family, which includes sister Emma and father Eric, narrator of the Magic Roundabout, inspired her to create a cookbook. Peter Bleksley is one of the experts on Channel 4's TV series Hunted, where the police are on the hunt for 14 'fugitives'. Peter worked undercover for 10 years with the Metropolitan Police ...
Sep 26, 2015•1 hr 25 min
He's sold over three million records, has over 2 million twitter followers and has notched up 66 million YouTube views of his work. Rapper Professor Green aka Stephen Manderson has now written his autobiography which details his troubled past, successful present and hopes for the future. He joins us on Saturday Live. Charlie le Mindu is a hair artist. He cuts hair, makes wigs and what he calls 'haute coiffure' a fusion of high fashion and hair which has produced hair coats and clothes. He's work...
Sep 19, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Science journalist and self-experimenter Michael Mosley joins Kate Silverton and Suzy Klein. Michael's varied career started in banking and then he qualified as a doctor before joining the BBC. He talks about the Fast Diet, reveals the most terrifying experiment he's undertaken, and why he's now investigating life before birth. In the week that the Queen becomes Britain's longest-serving monarch, listener Steve Evans talks about his experiences as this month he becomes the longest serving Parame...
Sep 12, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Richard Coles and Suzy Klein are charmed by Nigel Havers. He shot to fame as Lord Lindsay in the Oscar winning film Chariots of Fire, and is best known for playing charmers, cads and conmen from Coronation Street to Downton Abbey. He describes how he transformed himself into Mick Jagger, and why he's returned to the role of Algernon Moncrieff in The Importance of Being Earnest. A Saturday Live listener got in touch to tell us about a singing sensation from the 1930s. JP Devlin meets 98 year old ...
Aug 29, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Long before the actor Larry Lamb achieved notoriety as the evil Archie Mitchell in EastEnders or twinkly Micky Shipman in Gavin & Stacey he'd lived a life dramatic enough to be made into a TV hit of its own. A working class London boy with a troubled dad and a much loved mum Larry blundered into acting more by chance than design. In his early years he filleted fish and worked as an encyclopedia salesman and later as an oil engineer in Libya and Canada. It was there he really discovered his p...
Aug 22, 2015•1 hr 25 min
The prolific podcaster, comedian, writer and blogger Richard Herring joins Kate Silverton and Richard Coles to tell them why, after an unbroken run of performing a different stand-up show at the Edinburgh festival for the last eleven years, he's not going this year. Instead, he's re-enacting all his festival shows, plus creating a twelfth brand new one, in London. Former soldier Hannah Campbell was the first British mother wounded in Iraq in 2007. After years of surgery she decided to have her l...
Aug 15, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Simon Webbe is currently playing the part of the Big Bad Wolf in the Three Little Pigs but is perhaps best known for being a quarter of the boy band Blue. Simon made his theatre debut in Sister Act at the London Palladium and has also been a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing. Simon tells Kate Silverton and Richard Coles about learning discipline and his hopes for breaking Hollywood. Simon is at the Palace Theatre, Cambridge Circus, London until the 6th September Annie Humphries is a loyal Satu...
Aug 08, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Suzy Klein and Kate Silverton present this week's Saturday Live. He's a stand up comedian who has done musicals, panto, hosted game shows, is a panelist on Just a minute, who won Celebrity big brother, came third on Strictly and has written 3 adult novels. Now Julian Clary has turned his hand to children's fiction. He joins us to talk about his varied career. Listener Jackie Winter got in touch with us about her experience clocking up more than 100,000 miles over her 40 years as a tandem rider. ...
Aug 01, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Comedian and writer Jenny Eclair talks about her latest novel Moving, which taps into her obsession with motherhood and family secrets; whilst taking Jenny back to memories of being a life model and drama student in Manchester. Alan Gardner has won awards for his work and he's now starring in TV series The Autistic Gardener. Alan talks about making the show, his passion for plants and recent Asperger syndrome diagnosis. JP Devlin visits the Marie Curie hospice in Solihull to talk to the terminal...
Jul 25, 2015•1 hr 25 min
The tenor Alfie Boe joins Richard Coles and Suzy Klein to talk about his latest project with Pete Townhend's Classic Quadrophenia, and going to Broadway to star as Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. Azi Ahmed grew up in a devout Pakistani family in Manchester and set off for Central Saint Martins in London. Leading a double life she set up an internet company and then, with no military experience, entered Chelsea Barracks for selection training hoping to become part of the SAS. Felicity Finch meets...
Jul 18, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by comedian Phill Jupitus. Having carved out a career in stand up, he was the voice that launched BBC 6 Music, spending 5 years presenting Breakfast. He is a regular on a multitude of TV and radio panel shows and was a team captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks for 18 years. He starred in the West End musical Hairspray and more recently toured with the Mel Brooks' musical The Producers. Sue Lawrence is a food writer and one of the very first Masterchef winne...
Jul 11, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Writer and actress Sally Phillips first appeared regularly on our screens in female comedy series Smack the Pony. Roles in Alan Partridge and Bridget Jones soon followed and since then she's carved out a niche as one of the UK's top comedy actors - appearing in Rescue Me, Parents, Skins and Jam and Jerusalem in the UK and Green Wing, Veep and Parents across the pond. On Radio 4 she's Claire in the Community, she's popularised the phrase "bear with..." as posh girl Tilly in TV sitcom Miranda and ...
Jul 04, 2015•1 hr 25 min
With Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Boris Becker is the only person to have won two Wimbledon titles by the time he was 18. He talks about tennis, his love of Wimbledon, a place he now calls home, and life away from the courts. Lorna Luft discusses her life and relationship with her mother, Judy Garland. Whilst Lorna loves entertaining audiences onstage she reveals there's one song she won't be singing. The Katanas are 19-year-old identical twins called Millie and Hope. At 14 they played twins in...
Jun 30, 2015•1 hr 25 min
The comedian and travel writer, Dom Joly, joins Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles. Best known as the star of Trigger Happy TV, he has written a number of books including The Dark Tourist for which he visited some of the world's most unlikely destinations such as Chernobyl and North Korea. Julia Miles spent 28 years as the wife of a diplomat, living in Libya, Saudi Arabia and Athens, has worked as a social worker, a probation officer and is now a psychotherapist. She reveals the realities of life as a...
Jun 20, 2015•1 hr 26 min
Bestselling author of the Shopaholic series Sophie Kinsella has written her first book for young adults. She joins Aasmah Mir and Suzy Klein on Saturday live to talk about her joy in writing for different audiences, having a film of her book made, and getting into the mind of a teenager. Listener Rob Cain emailed to tell Saturday Live about his volunteer work with 'Luthiers sans Frontiers -UK' (violinmaker's without borders ). He has just spent two weeks in Kabul, at the Afghanistan National Ins...
Jun 13, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by the American stand-up comic Reginald D Hunter. He talks about growing up in America's Deep South, only being the fourth funniest in his family and how, although having lived in the UK for 17 years, he still gets caught out by our 'common' language. Andre Anderson comes from an estate in North West London with a reputation for gang violence and crime. He tells us about 'Authors of the Estate' - a project to encourage others to find their voice in the pen...
Jun 06, 2015•1 hr 25 min
The journalist and novelist, Tony Parsons, joins Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Tony was working on the night shift at Gordon's Gin Distillery when he was offered his first job as a journalist on the New Musical Express. When he wasn't hanging out with rock stars he was embedded with the Vice Squad at 27 Savile Row, West End Central, where the roots of his crime character, DC Max Wolfe, first began. Saturday Live listener, Hilary Nicoll, talks about The Museum of Dad. Featuring a music case, a tr...
May 30, 2015•1 hr 25 min
With Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Jon Culshaw talks about making a career out of impressions, with a repertoire of over 350 voices including John Major, Simon Cowell, Ed Miliband and Patrick Moore. Jon also talks about wanting to take on more serious roles, his fascination with astronomy and love of old cars. Jack Andraka is a pioneering teenage scientist who discovered a way to detect some forms of cancer in their early stages. Now eighteen, he talks about his work, which was initially inspire...
May 23, 2015•1 hr 24 min
Presented by Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Chris Tarrant has been a household staple since the mid 70s when he shook up Saturday mornings with children's TV series Tiswas. He went on to do Capital Radio breakfast show and was the presenter of ground breaking quiz show Who wants to be a Millionaire, which ran for 15 years, presenting many other programmes along the way. His latest project has been a labour of love - a book about his father's experience in the second world war. But it's a story he...
May 16, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Presented by Richard Coles and Suzy Klein. DJ and veteran festival-goer Edith Bowman on her love for the sonic boom of Green Man and Glastonbury. For the past twenty years Edith's taken in two or three festivals a year - and after attending more than 80 of them, seeing 1,500 bands and having two children she explains why her passion is as great as ever. Grammy award winning jazz singer Gregory Porter describes how his mother inspired his move of careers, and the music that stirs his soul. Campin...
May 09, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Clinical psychologist and broadcaster Professor Tanya Byron joins Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir to talk tales of the clinic, how a family tragedy sparked her interest in psychology and destigmatising vulnerable people. Becoming unexpectedly jobless in 2012 prompted Michelle Thomas to start paying people to tell her their stories. The response was so amazing she's now crowd-funding a book which will feature some of stories. This week marks 70 years since the end of the second world war in Europe. ...
May 02, 2015•1 hr 25 min
In the studio with Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles this week is Conchita Wurst winner of Eurovision 2014. Conchita hails from Columbia and is the alter ego of Tom Neuwirth who was born in Austria. When she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014 with her song "Rise Like A Phoenix" she gained international fame - and also became a gay icon to the LGBT community all over the world. Conchita is a Drag Queen - not transgender. Jo Pavey has proved it's never too late to realise your dreams. The veteran ...
Apr 25, 2015•1 hr 25 min
The comedian, writer and presenter Paul Merton joins Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles. A regular fixture on our radios and TVs - from Just a Minute to Have I Got News For You? But it's pure improvisation that he loves - starting with the Comedy Store Players back in 1985, a gig that he still does every Sunday. And he's about to start a UK tour improvising with a group of friends. Vanessa Mann on deltiology with a difference - why she buys sets of postcards, with the aim to trace living relatives of ...
Apr 18, 2015•1 hr 25 min
Dame Zandra Rhodes is one of Britain's best-known fashion designers, putting London at the forefront of the international fashion scene in the 1970s. Her extensive list of clients has included Princess Diana and Freddie Mercury. Rhodes now lives with her partner, the 94 year old film producer Salah Hassanein and former head of Warner Bros. In 2003 Zandra founded The Fashion and Textile Museum, the only museum in the UK solely dedicated to showcasing developments in contemporary fashion, as well ...
Apr 11, 2015•1 hr 25 min
