The Jago is one of the few black-owned clubs left in Dalston, East London. When Kwame took it over in 2018 his idea was to make it a space for community – whether giving grassroots musicians and DJs a place to start nights or providing a food bank for local residents. But as the cost of living starts to bite, a noise complaint that could cost thousands to resolve makes Kwame wonder whether he can afford to keep the club open while staying true to his values. Produced and presented by Emily Dicks...
Dec 19, 2022•28 min
Zoe’s not entirely sure how to make sense of the last couple of years. But she’s going to give it a go. This is her story of the good, the bad and the ugly everydayness of life with Long Covid. Via life-saving phone calls, cloud-gazing park walks, homeschooling squabbles, summer holidays that don't feel like summer holidays, and lots of lying in bed. And now it's December 2022, over two and a half years after Zoe first got ill. Life is not all Christmas chocolate boxes and Ding Dong Merrily on H...
Dec 12, 2022•28 min
Richard Gamble believes God has given him a mission: to build a huge national monument, made from a million bricks, each representing an answered Christian prayer. It seems an impossible task for a sports chaplain who has no experience of construction. And yet over the past eight years, he's managed to pull together a project team, raise thousands of pounds and launch a global design competition with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). But before a single brick can be laid, they ne...
Nov 28, 2022•27 min
Concluding a sequence of stories offering three different perspectives of the cost of living crisis. In Whitehaven, West Cumbria, Neil receives an update on whether a new coal mine will in in the town. He and his son both aspire to work there if the pit receives approval. Fighting for the mine to be rejected is Maggie, an environmental activist who has dedicated years of her life to opposing the project. A Barrister Aisha adjusts to a new reality following strike action and in Eastbourne, East S...
Nov 21, 2022•27 min
Continuing three parallel stories of the cost of living crisis. Join a striking barrister, a miner hoping to work again and the customer of a pawnbroker's as they make ends meet.
Nov 21, 2022•28 min
Over the coming weeks, the Untold follows three individuals as they experience the cost of living crisis this autumn. We hear from a barrister in Manchester who is stepping out on strike action for the first time. We visit a pawnbroker's and her customers as they part with their belongings to pay the bills; and a father praying for a coal mine to open in Cumbria and provide jobs for his community to rely on. Producers: Sam Peach, Sarah Bowen and Neil McCarthy
Nov 21, 2022•28 min
Finding the long-lost pink-headed duck has been Richard's obsession for twenty years.
Oct 31, 2022•27 min
In 2011 Lindsay McKenna was running corporate workshops from her farm in Ross-on-Wye. An animal lover as a child, when Lindsay came across a raccoon living in squalid conditions she offered to take it. But this was just the beginning. As word spread, Lindsay discovered more and more exotic animals in trouble. Today her farm is home to almost 200 exotic animals including Lemurs, Lynx, Mountain Lions, Coatis and Servals. Lindsay gave up her corporate work to look after these animals, but with food...
Oct 17, 2022•28 min
GLOR1A has always dreamed of becoming a singer. Growing up in a Pentecostal Christian family near Blackpool, music was always part of her life and she spent her childhood summers performing on the pier before heading off to university to study business, finance and economics. But the siren call of music remained strong, with GLOR1A eventually moving to London and recording vocals for house music producers. Often unpaid and feeling overlooked, Gloria was close to giving up until she met Gaika, a ...
Jun 30, 2022•28 min
We’ve all done it, at some point: You walk past a shabby, ruined building, with boarded up windows and peeling paint, and you think: 'That could be really beautiful if we could only fix it up'. It’s a very human kind of fantasy. To take something shabby, and broken, and neglected, and make it beautiful, and loved once again. Whether it's your local crumbling church, a dusty old cinema, or a pub that's seen better days, we've all thought about buying it up, turning it around, and making it a foca...
Jun 13, 2022•28 min
When P&O Ferries suddenly fired its staff on the spot on 17th March, there was an outcry from politicians, unions and the press with widespread scathing condemnation of the company. P&O claimed it had made huge losses during the pandemic and that its current business model was unsustainable. It offered severance packages but the nearly 800 staff who accepted them also needed to agree not to make any legal claims against P&O or talk to the media. Sous chef John Lansdown was the only s...
Jun 06, 2022•28 min
The covid-19 lockdowns were brutal for small businesses. They were particularly tough for barbers. In an industry when getting up-close and personal is the only way to get the job done, the business of hair-cutting was simply unworkable. Phil, a barber in Pudsey, West Yorkshire, knows that the gentleman's shaves, haircuts, skin-fades and beard-trims he offers can be so much more than just personal grooming - they can be a much needed self-esteem boost, a chance to chat to a sympathetic ear, or a...
May 30, 2022•27 min
If you look out to the horizon from the coast of South Wales or North Somerset, you see two bumps on the horizon - one tall and one flat. These are the islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm - the former is English, the latter Welsh. Since 2018, Mat Brown has been the warden of Flat Holm - an island of just 500m across, mainly populated by gulls. He is responsible for the island's nature reserve, its buildings (which include a lighthouse, a foghorn cottage, a Victorian barracks and a ruined cholera...
May 16, 2022•28 min
Will a woman be elected to the all-male Western Isles Council? Catrìona Murray on the Isle of Lewis is going to try. Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council) is the local authority governing the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. 5 May 2022 will see local elections across the UK and local government is particularly important to life on the islands. The council is traditionally male dominated and currently there are no female members, but Catrìona Murray wants to change that. This year she is r...
May 09, 2022•28 min
In 2019 Abhi Gotadki came to the United Kingdom from New Zealand to pursue his dream of becoming a GP. This meant leaving behind his wife and daughter but they decided it was best for all of them for Abhi to complete his training. In March 2020 with the Covid pandemic gathering pace New Zealand introduced some of the strictest border controls anywhere in the world leaving Abhi in the UK with no means of seeing his family. Now with New Zealand's borders open once again Abhi has booked his flight ...
May 02, 2022•28 min
The staff of Cornwall Airport Newquay prepare to receive President Biden and other world leaders for the G7 summit in June. The stakes couldn't be higher for airport boss Pete Downes. This is President Biden's first foreign trip since taking office and receiving a huge aircraft like Air Force One presents a big challenge for this tiny airport. Preparations begin months in advance. Pete and his team must oversee the construction of a whole new parking area for the world leaders' aircraft, as well...
Dec 13, 2021•28 min
In 2005 Zoe McQuade and Pat Evans set-up the Little Bramley Farm Sanctuary in Polegate, Sussex, caring for sick, abused and unwanted horses. In 2020 they were told that their lease on the land was coming to an end and they would have to move on. Zoe and Pat have dealt with numerous challenges in the past, but for the first time they face the prospect of having to close the sanctuary down. Grace Dent and producer Toby Field follow Zoe and Pat as they weigh up their options and consider what futur...
Dec 06, 2021•28 min
Nick has an unbearable tooth ache and has tried, and failed, to extract the bad tooth himself. He's homeless and, like many others, can't access NHS dental care. When a mobile dentist van arrives at a homeless support centre, Nick joins the queue. He's desperate but he was too late putting his name on the list. Will he get an appointment? The charity van roams Britain with a dedicated brigade of volunteer dentists, filling in wherever the need is greatest. As it parks up outside the support cent...
Nov 22, 2021•27 min
On 22 March 2017, 25-year-old Will Dyson was walking along Westminster Bridge, when a vehicle mounted the pavement and hit him from behind. The Terror Attack left five people dead and more than 50 injured. Will was one of the injured. In the lead-up to the year anniversary, producer Georgia Catt followed Will as he faced up to his changing views of the incident. She also witnessed him receive the devastating news that his doctors weren't happy for him to take part in the Hackney Half Marathon, a...
Nov 15, 2021•28 min
Bally, a fisherman on the West Coast of Scotland, navigates a year of Brexit, Covid, an environmental crisis and a broken down boat. Bally fishes off Isle of Skye and has been doing so for decades, but this year has been his most challenging yet. Having survived 2020 and the global pandemic, January 2021 brought a new lockdown and the departure of the UK from the EU. This changed everything for Bally. He fishes for langoustines, or prawns, and for these shellfish there was an entirely new set of...
Nov 01, 2021•28 min
James 33 and Courtney 28 were fed up of struggling to make ends meet and decided on a radical solution: they swapped their rented house for a bright orange sprinter van which they’ve converted and affectionately christened DeeDee. Instead of working longer hours, they’ve halved their working week and still think they can pay off their debts and save enough for a place of their own. Producer Sue Mitchell hears what happens as they put their plan into action and set off on the open road. They made...
Oct 18, 2021•28 min
Alex Trenchard is the founder of Standon Calling, a 17,000-capacity festival that takes place every year in Hertfordshire. The festival brings together thousands of music fans and hundreds of talented workers who together are part of putting on something spectacular. But when festivals disappeared at the start of the pandemic - many of us didn’t realise just how much they meant to us. Over 85,000 people in the UK are employed by the festival industry, and for many the first few months of 2021 le...
Oct 04, 2021•28 min
Andrew is a school refuser. He hasn’t done a full day of school since 2019. "He will just refuse to get dressed. He will hide under his bed. And if you physically try and get him out of the house, he is not a violent child in any way, but he will hurt you to get away from the situation." His parents are trying to pursue their careers but, even if they can coax him through the school gates, they often get a call an hour later to pick him up. Everyone has tried to understand why he won’t go. He ha...
Jun 14, 2021•28 min
A year of lockdowns has made a lot of us re-evaluate our lives and our priorities. For busy people, especially busy people who actually like their work, it can be a challenging thing to slow down. What happens when the thing at the centre of your life – the thing that makes your life make sense – ceases to be there? And what might that make space for, if you let it? Maybe you’d start to notice other things that you had overlooked, because you were so busy all the time… Grace Dent tells the story...
Jun 07, 2021•28 min
Greg and David are desperate to get on the ladder. They rent a small flat together in Greater Manchester and have spent the last year of lockdowns living on top of each other. The dream is to get somewhere with a bit more space. A place of their own. It feels beyond their budget until they realise they can afford a new build house under the government’s Help To Buy scheme. The scheme works as an equity loan, where the government loans the buyer 20% of the house price to go toward the deposit. Th...
Apr 26, 2021•28 min
Grace Dent follows Cornwall Airport Newquay over the tough pandemic winter. The Untold has been tracking the fortunes of the airport since March 2020, when the regional airline Flybe collapsed. Since then successive lockdowns and travel restrictions have left the airport close to permanent closure. The Untold follows the airport’s director and staff over the difficult winter months, as well as speaking to one of the airport’s taxi drivers and the owners of the nearby airport hotel, the Smugglers...
Apr 19, 2021•28 min
In an unexpected twist of Lockdown 3, sea shanties blew up on social media. Suddenly, everyone was singing ‘Wellerman’, a mid-19th Century whaling song about life on-board a whaling ship. A song of hope and unity which brought people together via the power of the internet. JD, Dave, Andy and Robbie find themselves at the centre of this shanty storm. They are old friends who together make up The Longest Johns, a sea shanty band from Bristol. Back in 2018, they released a version of Wellerman on t...
Apr 12, 2021•28 min
John’s mother thinks he is involved with county lines. How can she get him to stop? From a fun and gorgeous, football-loving youngster John has turned into an uncontrollable teen. He has had several run-ins with the police, has vast amounts of money in the house and sleeps with a knife under his pillow. Tanya and Antony are middle-class professionals and had big dreams for their son. Now they just want to keep him safe. “I went from academic expectation, to no GCSEs - then I got down to be alive...
Dec 21, 2020•28 min
Young entrepreneur Jack needs to earn big this Christmas if he wants to save his global company. Jack is only 27, but he's already CEO of his own firm. He left school to start up an online business, establishing a successful international trade in fancy dress costumes...until the pandemic hit. With everything he'd built under threat, he's decided to risk it all on a new venture: BargainFox, an online store selling discounted items. It's an industry full of big players, with whom he'll have to co...
Dec 14, 2020•28 min
In March this year the musical 'City of Angels' was about to open in the West End. Sadie-Jean Shirley was one of the youngest members of the cast. As well as a key role in the ensemble she'd also been chosen as a cover for one of the leads. After years of training and earning her spurs in the business this was a real breakthrough moment for the 24 year old performer. And then lockdown. 'City of Angels' didn't even make it to the first night. Producer Tom Alban has been in touch with Sadie-Jean s...
Nov 23, 2020•28 min
