SATURDAY 30 AUGUST 2014

SAT 00:00 Book at Beachtime (b0124v3t)
SJ Watson - Before I Go to Sleep

Episode 5

What if you lost your memory every time you went to sleep?

How would you cope with having to relearn your history every day only to lose it again?

In SJ Watson's desperately compelling and ambitious debut thriller, a woman has no memory of who she is. She lives in the suburbs cared for by her husband, she can't work, she doesn't have any friends, she's trying to live a normal life but she can't remember anything when she wakes up in the morning. Slowly she starts to try and rebuild her memory, to piece together what has happened to her, who she is.

This is Christine's story.

Abridged by Alison Joseph
Read by Stella Gonet
Produced by Lucy Collingwood


SAT 00:30 15 Minute Drama (b01bbb68)
The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Series 3

Episode 5

In Hattie Naylor's dramatisation of the diary for 1662, Samuel's brother, Tom, is in love and hoping to marry. But he has exaggerated his income and after some toing and froing, his fiancée breaks the engagement, much to Tom's distress. Lord Sandwich tells Sam that there is hidden treasure undiscovered in the Tower - and charges Samuel with trying to find it. The year ends with Elizabeth unwell in bed and Sam feeding her Christmas treats.

CAST
Samuel Pepys . . . Kris Marshall
Elizabeth Pepys . . . Katherine Jakeways
Lord Sandwich . . . Blake Ritson
Tom . . . Gareth Pierce
Mr Wade . . . Matthew Gravelle

Theme music: Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, words by Robert Herrick and music by William Lawes, sung by Bethany Hughes. Lute, baroque guitar and theorbo played by David Miller. Violin and viol by Annika Gray, and recorders by Alice Baxter.

Historical consultant: Liza Picard
Sound by Nigel Lewis

A BBC Cymru Wales production directed by Kate McAll.


SAT 00:45 Ferdinand Mount - Cold Cream (b00ysqf2)
Episode 5

A dramatic moment in political history and a return to damsons. Ferdinand Mount's memoir concluded by Oliver Ford Davies.


SAT 01:00 The 99p Challenge (b007js0s)
Series 2

Episode 1

Crazy panel show capers as host Sue Perkins grills Jack Docherty, Pater Baynam, Armando Iannucci and Simon Pegg.

The game where someone stands to leave the studio 99p richer than when they came in.

Producer: David Tyler

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2000.


SAT 01:30 Pioneers (b00wmvmt)
Series 1

David Blunkett

David Blunkett talks about how failure wasn't an option during his rise to political high office.

Blind from birth, he talks openly about the isolation of attending boarding school from the age of four, as well as the trauma of losing his father at the age of twelve.

Coming from a deprived background, David recognised very quickly that his route out of poverty was through education and against all odds, he graduated from Sheffield University at the age of 22.

David went on to become the youngest-ever councillor on Sheffield City Council, and climbed his way through the political ladder to become the first ever blind Home Secretary.

First broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland in 2010.


SAT 02:00 Detective (b04fgwcj)
Series 2

5. Four Faces of Crime

DS Brook and DC Harrison meet the eccentric Mr Parsons. Meanwhile a gruesome meat axe murder is investigated...

Stories of crime and detection in London by Robert Barr featuring long-serving, ducking-and-diving DS Dave Brook and his assistant, Detective Constable Blair Maxton.

CAST:

DS Dave Brook …. Ray Brooks
DC Blair Maxton …. Christopher Blake
Chief Inspector Roach …. Stephen Yardley
DC Harrison …. Peter Cleall
Judy …. Jacqueline Tong
Peter Parsons … Derek Francis
Tommy …. Johnny Wade

Producer: Martin Fisher

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1982.


SAT 02:30 School of Rock (b0076ywb)
Live at Leeds Again

Andy Kershaw is backstage as The Who return to play a gig at Leeds University. With Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend. From June 2006.


SAT 03:00 Classic Serial (b01q76l0)
Janet Frame - An Angel at My Table

Episode 2

The autobiography of Janet Frame, dramatised for radio by Anita Sullivan.

Frame was New Zealand's best known but least public writer. The author of 12 novels, four story collections, one book of poetry and three volumes of autobiography, even at the height of her success Frame shunned publicity - which had the effect of making the media and her readership even more intrusively interested. It was the issue of her mental health which generated the most conjecture.

In her twenties she spent four and a half years in mental hospitals and was wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia. Her writing saved her; the success of her first collection of short stories (The Lagoon and Other Stories) convincing doctors that she did not need a planned lobotomy.

To "set the record straight" about the circumstances of her committal to mental hospitals, in the early 80's Janet Frame wrote her autobiography; three volumes entitled 'To The Is-land (1982) An Angel At My Table and The Envoy From Mirror City (both 1984). It was after the publication of "An Angel At My Table", at a time when several of her books had gone out of print, that Frame's literary status was cemented.

An Angel At My Table Episode 2 of 2
In episode two, after a failed suicide attempt, Janet agrees to a short period in hospital to recuperate. But the arrival of her mother to take her home triggers a reaction in Janet that will have calamitous repercussions for years to come.

All other roles were played by members of the cast.
With thanks to Houghton Valley School and Wellington High School, New Zealand.
Adapted for radio by Anita Sullivan
Music - Simon Russell
Sound design - David Thomas
Productions assistants -Sarah Tombling and Kathy Caton
Associate producer - Andrew Foster (New Zealand)
Producer/Director - Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 04:00 He Would, Wouldn't He? (b0076fdm)
A Steady Chap

A daughter starts to worry after her divorced mother meets a new man. Is he too good to be true? Written by Gillian Tindall. Read by Clare Corbett. From June 2003.


SAT 04:15 Drama (b01ngrwp)
Andy Walker - The Man Who Jumped From Space

The real life story of Captain Joe Kittinger and Project Excelsior. As jet planes flew higher and faster in the 1950s, the USAF became increasingly worried about the safety of flight crew who had to eject at high altitude. So Project Excelsior was initiated to perfect a parachute system that would allow a safe, controlled descent after a high-altitude ejection.

Producer Gary Brown

Project Excelsior was initiated in 1958 to design a parachute system that would allow a safe, controlled descent after a high-altitude ejection.

To test the parachute system, staff at Wright Field built a 200 ft (61 m) high helium balloon with a capacity of nearly 3 million cubic feet (85,000 m³) that could lift an open gondola and test pilot into the stratosphere. Joe Kittinger, who was test director for the project, made three ascents and test jumps. This is the story of the three jumps.


SAT 05:00 After Henry (b007k2z7)
Series 2

Bedside Manners

Poorly Sarah's in hospital and must cope with visits from her mother and daughter.

Simon Brett's comedy about three generations of women - struggling to cope after the death of Sarah's GP husband - who never quite manage to see eye to eye.

Starring Prunella Scales as Sarah, Joan Sanderson as Eleanor, Gerry Cowper as Clare, Benjamin Whitrow as Russell and Deborah Findlay as the Sister.

Four radio series were made, but instead of moving to BBC TV - Thames Television produced 'After Henry' for the ITV network.

Producer: Pete Atkin

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 1986.


SAT 05:30 Bangers and Mash (b0075gv1)
Episode 3

A health inspector calls. Will the struggling catering team have to halt pie production?

Six-part comedy series by Katie Hims.

Stars Catherine Harvey as Martina, Gerard McDermott as Jimmy, Roger May as Juan Jose, Jane Whittenshaw as Carol and Anthony Zaki as the Health Inspector.

Director: Cat Horn

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 1999.


SAT 06:00 Dostoyevsky - The Friend of the Family (b04fxy8d)
Russia, 1859: The Manor of Stephanchikovo has been thrown into chaos by the activities of a former sergeant who's set himself up as an arbiter of morals and taste.

When he interferes in the marriage plans of the family, the whole situation explodes.

Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1859 novel dramatised by David Blum. Starring David Suchet, Margot Boyd and Clive Merrison.

Colonel ...... David Suchet
Madame La Generale ...... Margot Boyd
Sashenka ...... Kathryn Hurlbutt
Sergei ...... John Webb
Foma Fomich ...... Clive Merrison
Natasha ...... Helena Breck
Falaley ...... Graham Blockey
Yezhevikin ...... Alan Dudley
Tatyana Ivanovn ...... Maggie McCarthy
Bahcheyev ...... Bernard Brown
Miss Perepelitsyn ...... Eva Stuart
Mizinchikov ...... Colin Starkey
Obnoskin ...... Gary Cady
Gavrila ...... Lockwood West
Servant ...... Alan Thompson

Director: Martin Jenkins.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 1984.


SAT 07:30 Yes Yes Yes (b00tcstj)
Series 1

The Last Gasp Gold

John Rawling relives the 1991 World Athletics Championships when Britain's 400m men's relay team beat the USA to gold.


SAT 08:00 Archive on 4 (b00rv8yk)
Ask the Fellows That Cut the Hay

In this week's Archive On Four, historian Alan Dein celebrates the centenary of his mentor George Ewart Evans, collector of Suffolk farming tales. Evans began by chatting to his neighbours over the fireside in the 1950's and transcribing stories about poaching shepherding, smuggling and ditching.

The talk was of a hardscrabble life, of leaky roofs and meals of pea soup and pollard dumplings and beef only at Christmas with occasional festivities like the Whitsun fair.

With the help of BBC producer David Thomson, Evans recorded many of these tales and they were broadcast on the Third Programme.

Evans came from a Welsh mining village and he sympathised with the labourers' stories about the tyranny of the trinity of the parson, squire and farmer. He was a sympathetic listener who asked allowed his community to speak for itself and he captured the stories of people whose traditions had been unbroken for generations, who worked on the land before mechanisation and who believed in magic and folk wisdom and had intuitive understanding of working with animals.

Evans' eleven books about the working lives and folk stories of Blaxhall are a portrait of every facet of his village and paved the way for books and programmes, both fiction and not fiction, about British agricultural life.

Alan Dein talks to people who remember him in the village of Blaxhall and to his son Lord (Matthew) Evans and youngest daughter Susan as well as historian Owen Collins.

A WHISTLEDOWN PRODUCTION FOR BBC RADIO 4.


SAT 09:00 Ed Reardon's Weekend (b01nsw4v)
The author and pipe-smoker undertakes a journey through his life literary. Featuring The Swim, Dad, The Last Miaow, Parsnip Junction, Summer of '76 and Original British Drama.

What can be said about Ed Reardon that the man himself could not write with greater style and elan? The man who once ghost-wrote a book for Sooty is never lost for words. Even his recent theft of Edam from a BBC redundancy party cannot keep him off-air for long.

A warning to 12-year-old media charlatans though: it's time to tremble. Lynne Truss's fiercest critic is here to grace BBC Radio 4Extra in person. The scourge of the railway fare tariff has hand-picked six chapters of his life to share with you, in a retrospective already hailed as "a collection of programmes".

Finally the author of Who Would Fardels Bear is set to receive his due. Or would do, if we could keep him out of the betting shop and in the studio long enough to get his links recorded.

Ed's recent output includes the Stig's Xmas Book of Speed Camera Locations, but there's no denying the sheer artistic power of the man, as he applies his singular talent to children's TV, misery memoirs, Original British Drama and even breaking a window.

Produced by Martin Dempsey.


SAT 12:00 CJ Sansom - Dark Fire (b04fxz29)
Episode 1

CJ Sansom's Tudor crime novel set in the last days of Thomas Cromwell, featuring lawyer detective Shardlake. Stars Justin Salinger.


SAT 13:15 Baldi (b007k4pr)
Series 4

The Smoker

The priestly sleuth probes the murder of an outspoken, larger-than-life Dublin publisher and bon viveur. Stars David Threlfall.


SAT 14:00 I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (b00f6r5f)
Series 2

Episode 1

A trendy couple debate "what's in and what's out" - and a lonesome two-headed giant.

More quick-fire sketches, terrible puns, humorous songs plus TV and cinema parodies.

Stars Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, David Hatch, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie.

Written by John Cleese, Graeme Garden, Tony Hendra, Brian Cooke, Johnnie Mortimer and Hugh Woodhouse.

Originating from the Cambridge University Footlights revue 'Cambridge Circus', ISIRTA ran for 8 years on BBC Radio and quickly developed a cult following.

Songs by Bill Oddie and Jean Hart with music by Dave Lee.

Producer: Humphrey Barclay

First broadcast on the BBC Home Service in October 1965.


SAT 14:30 The Goon Show (b007jpcq)
Series 8

The Space Age

Neddy and Crun attempt to launch Min into space, but she gets stuck up the chimney. Stars Spike Milligan. From November 1957.


SAT 15:00 Archive on 4 (b00rv8yk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]


SAT 16:00 Dostoyevsky - The Friend of the Family (b04fxy8d)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]


SAT 17:30 Mark Thomas: The Manifesto (b00xhzjc)
Series 3

Episode 3

Comedian-activist, Mark Thomas, considers the blue-sky political policy suggestions of the public.

This week's agenda:

1) Nationalise British Music Festivals

2) Abolish Stamp Duty

3) Reduce Voting Age to 16

Plus more weird and wonderful suggestions from the studio audience, submitted as "Any Other Business".


SAT 18:00 Charles Chilton - Space Force (b007jmd7)
Series 1

4. The Time Ship

"The ship was as tall as a skyscraper and as long as an ocean liner - its hull was round, like a submarine's."

Taken hostage by the aliens, the crew discover more about their mysterious captors.

Charles Chilton's intergalactic adventure starring Barry Foster and Nicky Henson.

Captain Saxon Berry .... Barry Foster
Chipper .... Nicky Henson
Magnus .... Nigel Stock
Lauderic .... Tony Osoba
Ifwa .... Wendy Murray
Treia .... Theresa Streatfeild
Voedica .... Lolly Cockerell
Jennie .... Jenny Twigge

Producer: Paul Mayhew-Archer

First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in April 1984.


SAT 18:30 Ben Moor - Undone (b00f6ddd)
Series 2

Unaccustomed

Carlo leads the story as Edna and Tankerton face their biggest challenge yet

Staring Alex Tregear and Ben Moor.

Ben Moor's comic sci-fi saga about magazine editor Edna Turner entering a parallel world where her version of London is replaced with the city of Undone.

Carlo .Jones..... Duncan Wisbey
Edna Turner ...... Alex Tregear
Tankerton Slopes ...... Ben Moor
Faceless Bureaucrat ...... Jot Davies
Daphne ...... Ray Baker
Prince ...... Kevin Eldon

Other parts played by the cast.

Producer: Colin Anderson

Made for BBC Radio 7 by BBC Radio Comedy and first broadcast in February 2008.


SAT 19:00 Ed Reardon's Weekend (b01nsw4v)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


SAT 22:00 Ross Noble Goes Global (b007jvt7)
Series 1

Ireland

Travelling from rainy Sligo to busy Dublin, the comedian performs for the locals and learns to play the penny whistle - badly.

Producer: Danny Wallace

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2002.


SAT 22:30 Chris Addison's Civilization (b00f2zsd)
A Working Society

Charting our bumpy evolution, Chris Addison explains why he chose to spell civilisation with a Z.

Continuing his journey through the vast and rich subject of civilisation, the thinking-idiot's anthropologist explains exactly what we need to create a new one.

With:

Professor Austin Herring (Geoffrey McGivern)
Jo Enright
Dan Tetsell

Producer: Simon Nicholls

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2006.


SAT 22:55 The Comedy Club Interviews (b04hkbcg)
For two hours, six nights a week, the Comedy Club offers the best comedy around. Simon Munnery chats to Josie Long.


SAT 23:00 The Mark Steel Solution (b007k1rm)
Series 4

Religion

The radical comedian proposes new ways to solve the lack of understanding between different faiths. From August 1996.


SAT 23:30 Richard Herring's Objective (b0174gl1)
Series 2

The Wheelchair

'The Wheelchair' is the representative symbol of disability on access signs.

In his series on objects, Richard asks whether there is equal access? He wonders if it is still the case that we see the disability rather than the person.

With Emma Kennedy and special guest, comedian Francesca Martinez.

Producer: Tilusha Ghelani

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2011.