The BBC has announced that it has a sustainable plan for the future of the BBC Singers, in association with The VOCES8 Foundation.
The threat to reduce the staff of the three English orchestras by 20% has not been lifted, but it is being reconsidered.
See the BBC press release here.
RADIO-LISTS: BBC RADIO 4 Extra
Unofficial Weekly Listings for BBC Radio 4 Extra — supported by bbc.co.uk/programmes/
1940: A fire warden team are put to the severest test during a bombing raid. Will they all survive?
R Chetwynd-Hayes's creepy tale dramatised for radio by Patricia Mays.
Stars Reginald Marsh as Drayton. Garrard Greene as Hughes, Robert Glenister as Raymond, Adrian Egan as Smithers, Nigel Graham as Jackson and David Graham as Conway.
Director: Derek Hoddinott
First broadcast on the BBC World Service in 1984.
The tragi-comic tale of love gone sour and shattered dreams eloquently depicted in the Christmas classic Fairytale of New York is the focus of this edition of Soul Music. James Fearnley, pianist with The Pogues recounts how the song started off as a transatlantic love story between an Irish seafarer missing his girl at Christmas before becoming the bittersweet reminiscences of the Irish immigrant down on his luck in the Big Apple, attempting to win back the woman he wooed with promises of 'cars big as bars and rivers of gold'.
Gaelic footballer Alisha Jordan came to New York to play football aged 17 from County Meath in Ireland. Despite being dazzled by the glamour and pace of New York City, she missed her family and friends and stencilled the words 'Fairytale of New York' on her apartment wall as an affirmation of her determination to make the most of her new life in the city. When she was later attacked on the street by a stranger, the words came to signify her battle to recover and not to
let the horrific facial injuries she suffered defeat her or her ambition to captain her football team.
Rachel Burdett posted the video of the song onto her friend Michelle's social media page to let her know she was thinking of her and praying for her safe return when Michelle went missing suddenly one December. Stories of redemption and of a recognition that Christmas is often not the fairytale we are sold, told through a seasonal favourite.
Producer: Maggie Ayre.
The private eye is convinced Agnes's murder is linked to a covert takeover bid for Ajax insurance, but can she prove it?
Sara Paretsky's thriller stars Kathleen Turner as Chicago private eye, VI Warshawski.
With Martin Shaw as Roger Ferrant, Avril Clark as Gabriella, Don Fellows as Father Carroll, Eileen Way as Rosa, Lorelei King as Barbara Paciorek, Helen Horton as Mrs Paciorek, William Hootkins as Bobby Mallory, John Bennett as O'Faolin, Kerry Shale as Murray Ryerson, Colin Stinton as Father Pelly and Peter Penry-Jones as Father Jablonski.
Sara Paretsky created one of the most popular female sleuths in modern crime fiction. Her heroine, VI Warshawski, is a strong female character in a male-dominated world. VI is comfortable packing heat and trailing nasty suspects but she never loses touch with her basic femininity. Paretsky says of her Warshawski: "I was troubled by the way women were portrayed in (detective fiction) they always seemed either evil or powerless. I thought it was time for a tough, smart, likeable female private investigator".
Kathleen Turner also starred in the same role in the 1991 film 'VI Warshawski'.
Dramatised by Michelene Wandor.
Director: Janet Whitaker
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1991.
Janet Ellis, host of the 1980s Children's BBC series Jigsaw, presents a celebration of the history and the art of the jigsaw puzzle.
More art - typically sentimental, traditional art - has made its way into more homes via the jigsaw puzzle than virtually any other medium. While it has since become the purveyor of comforting landscapes to the masses, it started life as an educational tool championed by the likes of philosopher John Locke. In 1760, London mapmaker John Spilsbury mounted one of his maps on hardboard and cut it into pieces to help children learn geography.
Janet tells the story of how, since then, it has become such a core feature of childhoods across the world. She hears how jigsaws hit their first major peak during the Great Depression, when 10 million a week were bought by families looking for cheap pastimes, and how they were used by immigration officers on Ellis Island to determine who should be allowed into the land of the free. Janet also explores how popular culture has flirted with the jigsaw, in novels and films as diverse as Mansfield Park, Citizen Kane and, most powerfully, Georges Perec's novel, Life: A User's Manual. She hears from academics and enthusiasts including Margaret Drabble, who explain the jigsaw's great allure.
Janet hears how jigsaws continue to be incredibly popular, having evolved into 3-D puzzles and of course made their way onto the internet, where no young children's games site is without one.
With the conference underway, Stevens's abilities as a butler are tested when his father is taken ill. Read by John Moffatt. From January 1990.
In the fifth programme of his series telling the story of the Christmas Carol Jeremy Summerly visits Dorchester where Thomas Hardy captured the caroling tradition that had matured through the 17th and 18th century but which faced extinction in the 19th. The West Gallery tradition of musicians and singers in parish churches was an integral part of community life in Hardy's Wessex as elsewhere. Jeremy explains the origins of that tradition and the fuguing carols so beloved at the time and why it was that their days were numbered.
Along with folk musician Tim Laycock he gets to see the carol manuscripts from which Hardy's great grandfather played and sang on Christmas night in 1800.
Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.
Producer: Tom Alban.
Florence meets her new mama and something stirs in Edith's cold heart. Stars Helen Schlesinger and Abigail Hollick. From November 2007.
In August 2003, 16 year-old Martin Burton suffered irreversible brain damage, and his parents Nigel and Sue agreed for his organs to be donated. Martin's corneas were frozen for future use, his right kidney was transplanted into an older woman, his left kidney into an older man. Martin's liver saved the life of Andrew Seely, a man in his thirties. Martin's heart has gone to 15 year-old Marc McCay.
In the final part of the series, journalist and writer Cole Moreton joins Nigel and Sue Burton as they travel up to Scotland to see Marc. Cole wants to find out how life has been for him these past 13 years since the transplant that saved his life. Cole is going to ask Marc to let Sue put a hand on his chest and feel the heart that came from her son beating inside him.
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.
Five hundred years after writing his most provocative political tract, Niccolo Machiavelli appears before an infernal court to appeal against the harsh treatment his works have received over time.
Rather than being seen as a description of political cynicism and opportunism, he argues that "Machiavellian" should be a compliment and The Prince has in fact been an infallible guidebook followed closely by all successful leaders.
The Prince By Niccolo Machiavelli
Adapted by Jonathan Myerson
Produced and directed by Clive Brill
A Pacificus production for BBC Radio 4.
Dr Phil Hammond chairs the debating game with Tony Hawks, Simon Fanshawe, Stuart Maconie and Steve Punt. From January 2000.
Sarah, her mother Eleanor and daughter Clare battle with colds - and each other.
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, Benjamin Whitrow as Russell, Gerry Cowper as Clare and Peter Howell as the Doctor,
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 August 1986.
Absconding with £4,601,740.72 of someone else's money proves more challenging than it sounds for Julius Hutch.
Starring Peter Jones as Julius Hutch.
With Celestine Randall as Mrs Pauline Tone, Justine Midda as Kate, Peter Whitman as Peter Fang, Jeffrey Wickham as Sexton Lewis and Collin Johnson as the News Reader.
Scripted by Collin Johnson.
Producer: Andy Jordan
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 1995.
Martin Jarvis performs the first of two beloved Jeeves stories by P G Wodehouse in front of an enthusiastic, invited audience at the Riverhouse Barn Theatre, Walton on Thames in Surrey.
In The Aunt and the Sluggard, Martin tells an extraordinary tale in the character of Bertie Wooster. While living in New York, Bertie has to persuade his brainy manservant Jeeves to concoct a spiffing plan, so that his poet pal Rocky can continue receiving a financial allowance from a rich aunt. The trouble is the aunt wants Rocky to have a good time visiting the fleshpots of Manhattan and to write her letters about it. But Rocky prefers to live as a recluse on Long Island, miles away. How on earth can it be done? Can Jeeves find a solution?
Director: Rosalind Ayres
A Jarvis and Ayres production for BBC Radio 4.
Ginny and Greg are a young couple who want to marry, but she's got 'a past' that she wants to discard. Her attempts to do so spark a series of superbly funny mistaken identities.
Alan Ayckbourn's comic masterpiece of misunderstanding opened at London's Duke of York's Theatre in 1967 and helped to establish him as one of the UK's leading comic dramatists.
Starring Rosemary Leach as Sheila, Michael Aldridge as Philip, Nigel Lambert as Greg and Joanna Wake as Ginny.
Producer: Kay Patrick
First broadcast as one of BBC Radio 4's West End Winners series of plays in 1975.
Julian Barnes and Hermione Lee travel to France in search of the places and people which inspired Alain-Fournier's novel of adolescent love Le Grand Meaulnes
Programme 2: Lost love in Paris.
On the first of June 1905, the 18 year old Henri-Alban Fournier (pen-name 'Alain-Fournier') saw a woman with a white parasol on the steps of the Grand Palais. He took a riverboat down the Seine, following her to her lodgings and for the next week he tried to attract her attention but a week later, by the church of Saint-Germain des Près, Yvonne de Quiévrecourt dashed his hopes of a romance saying "we are children ...what's the use ?"
A month after this encounter, Fournier's parents sent him to London, where he worked at Sandersons wallpaper factory for the grand father of the DJ Annie Nightingale. The letters he sent back to his childhood friend Jacques Rivière explain why he found English women shocking and show him working out what kind of writer he wanted to become. They exchanged views about Wagner, Dickens, the pre-Raphaelites and eventually both got jobs at the Nouvelle Revue Française.
8 years later, after tracking her with a detective, he met up with the now married Yvonne, just as he was about the publish Le Grand Meaulnes. In the novel she is re-imagined as Yvonne de Galais, first seen by the adventurer Meaulnes at a fete in a house in the woods - the lost estate.
Alain-Fournier began work on another novel and a play but war broke out and on 22 September 1914, having fought for only a few weeks, he was killed in action south of Verdun. Reported missing with 20 of his comrades-in-arms, his body was found in 1991 in a mass grave where German soldiers had buried him.
Producer: Robyn Read
Readings by Philip Franks from a translation by Frank Davison.
Journalist Grace Dent presents her own field guide to failure, told through some of our most cherished and ear-popping examples of infamous fails. Featuring contributions from writer Jon Ronson, philosopher Andy Martin and Stephen Pile, author of The Book Of Heroic Failures.
The fascinating inside story behind two of BBC radio's all-time favourite comedies: 'Beyond Our Ken' and 'Round the Horne'.
Presented by a former BBC Head of Radio Light Entertainment, Jonathan James-Moore.
Featuring cast members: Ron Moody and Bill Pertwee. Plus, the son of Beyond Our Ken scriptwriter Eric Merriman - Andy Merriman, Lyn Took - who was married to Barry Took, writer for both series - and the last surviving Round The Horne scriptwriter, Brian Cooke.
Extracts from Kenneth Williams diaries are read by David Benson.
Beyond Our Ken ran for 7 series, while Round The Horne ran for 4. Hear the very first and last editions of both series starring Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee, Ron Moody, Stanley Unwin and Douglas Smith.
The FIRST Beyond Our Ken - 1st July 1958:
Kenneth Horne's diary, poking fun at tax bills and Horn-o-rama.
The LAST Beyond Our Ken - 16th July 1964:
Kenneth Horne's week, Horn-o-rama and Drama of the Week.
The FIRST Round the Horne - 7th March 1965:
Trends, the BBC's Backroom Boys and part one of 'The Clissold Saga'.
The LAST Round The Horne - 9th June 1968:
Nobody knew it was the last show, but a surprise was in store for Julian and Sandy.
Producer: Peter Reed
Made for BBC 7 and first broadcast in 2004.
Spike Milligan's military merrymaking with Barry Humphries, John Bluthal, John Bird, Alan Clare, Roddy Maude-Roxby and Phillipe Le Bars. Recorded before an audience of soldiers.
Written by Spike Milligan. Produced by Charles Chilton.
Audio courtesy of The Goon Show Preservation Society
First broadcast on the BBC Home Service in June 1965.
A school inspection's due, but the visitor in the playground is not from OFSTED.
Created by Jim Eldridge, ten series of this comedy about a junior school ran between 1985 and 1998. King Street Junior Revisited ran from 2002 to 2005.
Written by Paul Copley.
Stars Karl Howman as Mr Sims, James Grout as the Headmaster, Deirdre Costello as Mrs Patterson, Paul Copley as Mr Long, Marlene Sidaway as Miss Lewis, Margaret John as Mrs Stone, Vivienne Martin as Mrs Rudd, Trevor Peacock as Mr Chips, Joseph Spinks as Rupert, Luke Nugent as Craig and Lucy Kent as Sunitra.
Producer: John Fawcett Wilson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 1995.
After being violently raped by someone she thought was a friend, Maddy is urged by the police to go public and prosecute her attacker, with very mixed results. From May 2012.
Canadian journalist Carl Honore chooses 'Vesti La Giubba' by Ruggero Leoncavallo and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's 'Helpless'.
Fastidious, unforgiving, disdainful, aphoristic, bellicose and wickedly compelling.
Legendary American writer and critic Gore Vidal (1925-2012) discusses his extraordinary life and career with Professor Anthony Clare.
Psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare's in depth interviews with prominent people from different walks of life.
Born in Dublin, author Anthony Clare held a doctorate in medicine, a master's degree in philosophy and was a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. After becoming a regular on BBC Radio 4's Stop the Week in the 1980s, he became Britain's best-known psychiatrist and earned his own vehicle, In the Psychiatrist's Chair. Starting in 1982, this series ran until 2001 and also transferred to TV. Series highlights include conversations with Bob Monkhouse, Cecil Parkinson and Gerry Adams.
Anthony Clare died suddenly in Paris aged 64 in 2007.
Producer: Michael Ember
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2000.
Curious about the apparently mystical qualities of bees, Henry goes in search of the mysterious founder of a bee-cult.
But he's unaware of the true horror lying at the root of the mystery of the man's disappearance...
Peter Redgrove's chilling drama stars Richard Morant as Henry, Martin Friend as the Beekeeper, John Robbins as Hanger, Rex Holdsworth as the Librarian, Hildegard Neil as Julia, Catherine Owen as Jennie, Leonard Fenton as James, John Justin as Paul and the Boys From Clifton College, Bristol.
Directed at BBC Bristol by Brian Miller.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1980.
It's 24 December 1937, and the world's foremost satanist Aleister Crowley is full of dread. Stars Nicholas Courtney and David Benson. From December 2010.
"You'll Never Leave..."
Reece Shearsmith presents a 3 hour League-fest of the acclaimed black comedy that began on BBC radio before transferring to BBC TV.
From his dressing room in the heart of London's theatreland, Reece looks back on the cult show he created with Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson.
From its origins as an award-winning stage show through to its debut on radio, hear how the League's humour was developed from awkward social situations.
Originally set in the grimy, remote northern town of Spent, Reece goes on to explain the initial thrill of transferring the characters to the small screen - when the setting was changed to the town of Royston Vasey.
The League ran for three series on BBC2, with more stage shows, a feature film - and the team reuniting on TV for their 20th anniversary in 2017.
Reece introduces the BBC Radio 4 series of 'On The Town With The League of Gentlemen' produced by Sarah Smith.
Benjamin Denton arrives for a visit to his Uncle Harvey and Auntie Val - in a town of oddball characters, including shopkeeper Mr Ingleby, taxi-driver Barbara, pen-loving Pauline at the Job centre, Mickey, Dr Chinnery and many more...
1: A Guest at the Dentons - 6th November 1997
2: Death by Mau Mau - 13th November 1997
3: Go to Joan Glover - 20th November 1997
4: Gunpowder, Treason and Plot - 27th November 1997
5: The Wedding - 4th December 1997
6: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - 11th December 1997
Producer: Martin Dempsey
Made for BBC 7 and first broadcast in 2005.
The Wrath of God is invoked, sparking a heart-to-heart with Satan. Stars Andy Hamilton and Jimmy Mulville. From December 1995.
The award-winning comic lists the liabilities of looking good. With Laurence Howarth and Daisy Haggard. From November 2010.
Arthur Smith presents the best in contemporary comedy and Jessica Fostekew challenges Caroline Mabey to a Christmas Quiz!
Les Kelly (Kevin Bishop) hosts a magazine show from hell. Les is a cross between Jeremy Kyle and a slap in the face. He claims this is the only radio show for 'normal, decent people'. 'If you aren't normal or decent, this is not the show for you,' says Les.
Should able bodied people have the same rights as the disabled when it comes to having mobility scooters, guide dogs and hearing aides. This and other outrageous questions are put by Les Kelly, radio's most insensitive presenter. Also on the show - a preacher whose religious education lessons involves twisting balloons into the shape of Moses and Jesus, and a woman with an obsessive hatred of Belgians.
Written by Bill Dare and Julian Dutton.
Sony Award-winning comic, Tom Wrigglesworth returns for a new series of his open letters. This week, his letter is addressed to the insurance industry as Tom asks why everything has to be so confusing.
Written by Tom Wrigglesworth, James Kettle and Miles Jupp.
Produced by Simon Mayhew-Archer.
Dombey is in deep mourning for his son. Florence turns to her father for solace, but he turns away.
Originally published in monthly parts from 1846, Charles Dickens's novel appeared in one volume in 1848. Adapted in 20 parts by Mike Walker.
Charles Dickens..........Alex Jennings
Dombey......................Robert Glenister
Edith...........................Helen Schlesinger
Florence.....................Abigail Hollick
Captain Cuttle............Trevor Peacock
Mr Carker...................Adrian Lukis
Major..........................Nicky Henson
Walter........................Joseph Arkley
Mrs Brown.................Geraldine James
Mrs Skewton............. Fenella Fielding
Susan........................Nadine Marshall
Toots.........................Sam Pamphilon
Toodles.....................Ben Crowe
Rob............................Lloyd Thomas
Other parts played by Alex Lanipekun and Simon Treves.
Music by Nicolai Abrahamsen.
Directed by Jeremy Mortimer and Jessica Dromgoole.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2007.
4 Extra Debut. Christmas, 1944. A new locum's arrival sparks consequences for a doctor's family in the Lake District. Read by Sarah Jane Holm. From December 1996.
Cockney comedian Micky Flanagan's first radio series is about his progression from working-class Herbert to middle-class intellectual and being caught awkwardly between the two. His story is told through reflective interviews, but mainly, Micky's acclaimed stand up comedy. Micky's transition from the mean streets of the East End to the leafy lanes of Dulwich is a fascinating story, with each episode focusing on a different decade of Micky's life.
In this episode Micky takes us through this last decade, which he has spent settling down with a middle class woman "she's been ski-ing and everything" and building a career as a stand up comedian. In the documentary segments, Micky chats to his parents about turning to stand up and discusses comedy and class with the brilliant comic mind that is Sean Lock.
The series is written and performed by Micky Flanagan.
The Producer is Tilusha Ghelani.
Celebrating Christmas doesn't quite go to plan for Sid and Dora Edge. Starring Sid James and Dora Bryan. With Pat Coombs and Derek Lanyon.
Incidental music by Jack Emblow
Script by Eddie Maguire
Produced by John Browell
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in December 1965.
Spike Milligan's one-off festive show with John Bird, Bernard Miles, Bob Todd, Phillipe Le Bars, Roddy Maude-Roxby and Alan Clare's Naughty Navy Quartet.
Recorded before an audience of students at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. By permission of the Admiral President, Rear-Admiral P U. Bayley C.B.D.S.C.
Written by Spike Milligan. Produced by Charles Chilton.
Audio courtesy of The Goon Show Preservation Society.
First broadcast on the BBC Home Service in December 1965.
Five specially commissioned letters from five South African writers exploring aspects of life in the country in the week of the ANC elections.
Fi Glover introduces two search and rescue experts sharing their years of experience of working with dogs, including the role a flask of coffee can play in warming frozen paws - another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
4 Extra Debut. From Enya to Beethoven. Famed for playing Winston Churchill, actor Robert Hardy shares his castaway choices with Kirsty Young. From November 2011.
True stories told live in the USA. Meg Bowles introduces tales of people encountering the seemingly impossible.
The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling based in the USA. Since 1997, it has celebrated both the raconteur and the storytelling novice, who has lived through something extraordinary and yearns to share it. Originally formed by the writer George Dawes Green as an intimate gathering of friends on a porch in Georgia (where moths would flutter in through a hole in the screen), and then recreated in a New York City living room, The Moth quickly grew to produce immensely popular events at theatres and clubs around New York City and later around the USA, the UK and other parts of the world.
The Moth has presented more than 15,000 stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. The Moth podcast is downloaded over 27 million times a year.
Featuring true stories told live on stage without scripts, from the humorous to the heart-breaking.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Jay Allison and Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and is distributed by the Public Radio Exchange.
Actress and fashion icon Twiggy chooses 'The Laughing Policeman' by Charles Penrose and 'Yesterday' by The Beatles.
Can one act of kindness shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself in her carefully organised life? Read by Tracy Wiles.
Peter Bogdanovich, David Thomson and Jonathan Rosenbaum discuss Welles's legendary cinematic masterpiece Citizen Kane. From June 1999.
Louisa and Mary, daughters of the impoverished vicar of Aldecross, see only marriage as a means of escape from their routine lives.
The arrival of a new young curate fills them with anticipation, but will his intellectual qualities match up to the more physical attractions of Alfred Durant, the son of a local miner?
Lawrence's novella, written at around the same time as Sons and Lovers, is a classic tale of the struggle between emotion and intellect.
Stars Rachel Atkins as Louisa, Cathy Sara as Mary, Gillian Goodman as Mrs Lindley, David Timson as Mr Lindley and Robert Pickavance as Mr Massey.
Written by DH Lawrence and dramatised by Jane Beeson.
Directed by Peter Leslie Wild.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2000.
Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry archive with 'Adventures in Poetry' as Peggy Reynolds explores Thomas Hardy's nostalgic poem, The Oxen.
Despite Hardy's agnosticism, this work describes the traditional Nativity scene, with its enduring message of faith and hope.
It was first published in The Times on Christmas Eve of 1915, when the events of the First World War were at their most terrible.
Producer: Viv Beeby
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Day in 2005.
Mike Walker's dramatisation of the novel by Arthur C Clarke, set in the 22nd Century.
What is the secret at the heart of the space object known as Rama and why, years after the event, has Commander William Norton never spoken about what he found there?
William Norton ...... Richard Dillane
Li Kwok ...... Paul Courtenay Hyu
Pieter Rousseau ...... Jimmy Akingbola
Jimmy Pak ...... Robert Lonsdale
Aruna Calvert ...... Archie Panjabi
Gerry ...... Inam Mirza
Ruby Barnes ...... Janice Acquah
Laura Ernst ...... Ania Sowinski
Indira Gopal ...... Shelley King
Erl King ...... Peter Marinker
Tamara Ruiz ...... Jill Cardo
Tan Sun ...... Jonathan Tafler
Henning ...... Paul Rider.
Written by John Finnemore.
It's Lifejacket, Camera, Action as stardom beckons for one of the crew of MJN Air. But who will get to blow the final whistle? And will they look good in a vest?
Cast:
Carolyn Knapp-Shappey ..... Stephanie Cole
1st Officer Douglas Richardson ..... Roger Allam
Capt. Martin Crieff ..... Benedict Cumberbatch
Arthur Shappey ..... John Finnemore
Capt. Herc Shipwright ..... Anthony Head
Martin Davenport ..... Gus Brown
Produced and directed by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
Arthur Smith presents the best in contemporary comedy and Jessica Fostekew challenges Taylor Glenn to a Christmas Quiz!
The first in a new series of Stephen K Amos' sitcom about his own teenage years, growing up black, gay and funny in 1980s South London.
Written by Jonathan Harvey with Stephen K Amos.
Produced by Colin Anderson.
Ivor Cutler's unique views on how to promote a child's growth. Songs and stories, with Craig Murray-Orr. From May 1996.
Surreal saga of a dynasty delicately balanced on the edge of sanity. Written by and stars Viv Stanshall. From December 1996.
The private eye narrowly escapes with her life as the anonymous phone threats continue. Stars Kathleen Turner and Martin Shaw. From December 1991.
A heartbeat, star echoes and sounds of life. Blind broadcaster Peter White explores the world where sound means everything. From September 2003.
A mystery letter sparks a family surprise thanks to William - and a decision is taken over the fate of Father...
Peter Tinniswood's bawdy comedy serial stars Bill Wallis as Winston, Maurice Denham as Father, Shirley Dixon as Nancy, Liz Goulding as Rosie and Christian Rodska as William.
Director: Shaun MacLoughlin
First broadcast on BBC Radio in January 1990.
The godfather of all panel shows pays a visit to the New Theatre in Hull. Regulars Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor are joined on the panel by Miles Jupp and John Finnemore with Jack Dee in the chair. Colin Sell accompanies on the piano. Producer - Jon Naismith. It is a BBC Studios production.
Special guest Terry Wogan battles to take part in the trio's puntastic sketches.
Starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Junkin and Barry Cryer.
Script by John Junkin and Barry Cryer, with Tim Brooke-Taylor.
Music by the Denis King Trio.
Producer: David Hatch
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 1979.
Corporal Jones and Private Godfrey blunder on a Home Guard platoon exercise using live ammunition.
(The original TV episode has a very visual plot and is called 'The Desperate Drive of Corporal Jones', so changes were made to make it more meaningful for listeners).
Starring Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring, John Le Mesurier as Sergeant Wilson, Clive Dunn as Corporal Jones, John Laurie as Private Frazer, Arnold Ridley as Private Godfrey, Ian Lavender as Private Pike and Larry Martyn as Private Walker.
Adapted for radio from Jimmy Perry and David Croft's TV scripts by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles.
Producer: John Dyas
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 1976.
Crazy panel show capers as host Sue Perkins grills Simon Pegg, Armando Iannucci, Bill Bailey and David Quantick.
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 February 2003.
Bill and Betty look at a new flat, but how will Katherine react if they move?
The East End meets Cheshire in Arline Whittaker's six-part sitcom.
Stars Barbara Windsor as Betty, Peter Sallis as Harold, Glynn Edwards as Bill, Rosalind Knight as Muriel, Simon Molloy as Trevor and Diana Mather as Katherine.
Producer: Mike Craig
First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in 1986.
Can Jeeves help Lord Rowcester to sell his crumbling pile?
An all-star cast brings PG Wodehouse's comedy thriller to galloping life.
Jeeves is on loan to young Lord Rowcester (Bill). Wooster is absent, attending a school designed to teach the aristocracy to fend for itself. Jeeves has to exert his gigantic fish-fed brain to help his new master raise cash. A wealthy American widow thinks the Abbey is wonderful, full of ghosts. But will she buy it?
Meanwhile Captain Biggar is on the trail of a bookie and his clerk, who conned him at Epsom races and have somehow gone to ground in the Abbey. Will he realise its Bill and Jeeves?
Stars Martin Jarvis as Jeeves, Rufus Sewell as Rory, Joanne Whalley as Monica, Ian Ogilvy as Captain Biggar, Jamie Bamber as Bill, Moira Quick as Jill, Daisy Hydon as Ellen, Christopher Neame as Colonel Wyvern, Darren Richardson as Bulstrode and Matthew Wolf as the Commentator.
Dramatised by Archie Scottney.
Director: Rosalind Ayres
A Jarvis and Ayres production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in 2014.
'Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning ...'
Truman Capote considered 'A Christmas Memory' one of his best works of fiction. Kerry Shale reads the first of two parts as seven-year old Buddy and his best friend, the elderly Miss Sook, prepare for the festive season.
'"Oh my" she exclaims, "It's fruitcake weather. Buddy, stop stuffing biscuit and fetch our buggy. We've thirty cakes to bake."'
Read by Kerry Shale
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall.
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.
A group of male friends in their 60s revive the schoolboy New Orleans Jazz band that expressed their purist youthful idealism.
Youth and its high ideals have a brief musical re-flowering, until tragedy strikes. Has their time has finally passed?
Don Taylor's drama stars Jack Shepherd as Dave, Philip Jackson as Colin, Trevor Cooper as Derek, Thomas Arnold as Dick, Philip Joseph as Bob, Elizabeth Bell as Jenny and Martin Hyder as Chris.
Music by Bob Dwyer's Hot Six.
Director: Peter Kavanagh.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2003.
On his trip to Cornwall to see Miss Kenton, Stevens faces some awkward questions about his former employer. Read by John Moffatt.
Kazuo Ishiguro's 1989 Booker Prize winner abridged by Catherine Czerkawska. After a lifetime of service as butler in one of the great stately homes of England, Stevens belatedly puts his life into perspective.
Producer: Marilyn Imrie
A BBC Radio 4 Book At Bedtime from January 1990.
In the sixth part of his story of the Christmas Carol Jeremy Summerly reaches the 19th century and publications of old folk carols from what was thought to be a dying tradition. However, by mid-century, with the Tracterean movement in the Church of England at its height the carol and the singing of carols was once again hugely popular. It was the publication of a 'Christmas Carols New and Old by Henry Ramsden Bramley and John Stainer in 1867, that marked the height of another caroling golden age. However, it was now big business and there were reputations at stake when folk carol collectors saw their work hoovered up by the might of Bramley and Stainer.Jeremy also tells the story of the little 16th century Finnish manual 'Piae Cantiones' that provided a series of memorable re-workings of fifteenth century words and melodies, including In Dulce Jubilo and Good King Wenceslas.
Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.
Producer:Tom Alban.
Harriet Carker tries to appeal to her brother's better nature.
Originally published in monthly parts from 1846, Charles Dickens's novel appeared in one volume in 1848. Adapted in 20 parts by Mike Walker.
Charles Dickens.......................Alex Jennings
Dombey..................................Robert Glenister
Florence..................................Abigail Hollick
Edith.......................................Helen Schlesinger
Mr Carker...............................Adrian Lukis
Captain Cuttle.........................Trevor Peacock
Mrs Brown..............................Geraldine James
Mrs Skewton...........................Fenella Fielding
Alice.......................................Claire Rushbrook
Feenix....................................Bertie Carvel
Susan.....................................Nadine Marshall
Harriet....................................Katy Cavanagh
Toots......................................Sam Pamphilon
Other parts played by Lloyd Thomas, Ben Crowe and Judith Jones.
Music by Nicolai Abrahamsen.
Directed by Jeremy Mortimer and Jessica Dromgoole.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2007.
Stephanie Cole reads from the collection of essays by acclaimed writer Diana Athill.
Written from the vantage point of her late nineties, Athill's essays are wise, cheering and thought-provoking. They range from gentle (her love of beautiful clothes), heartbreaking (the miscarriage of a much-wanted child) to salutary (her difficult decision to relinquish her independence and move into a care home).
In this first essay, "Post-War", Athill delights in debunking the myth that Britain in the 1940s and 1950s was a mire of dreariness. A young woman when the war broke out, peace and its aftermath was a time of joy, freedom and optimism.
Photo credit: Mark Crick
Written by Diana Athill
Read by Stephanie Cole
Abridged and Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.
A series of stories by Roald Dahl
Dramatised by Stephen Sheridan.
Episode 1: Taste
Charles Dance leads the cast as the urbane Storyteller in dramatisations of five classic tales by Roald Dahl. Bizarre and amusing by turns, these black comedies are justly famous for their surprise endings.
The stories show Dahl at the height of his powers as a writer of adult fiction. They are stylishly plotted, vividly characterised and made unforgettable by their breezy cynicism, presenting as they do, a hilariously bleak view of family life. Their satisfying conclusions invariably leave bullies, schemers, adulterers and frauds soundly punished.
In Taste, whenever Mike Schofield and Richard Pratt dine together, they play a little game. If Pratt, a conceited wine buff, can identify a rare vintage in a blind tasting, he wins a case of the wine in question. When Schofield boasts that he has acquired a wine whose obscurity renders it unguessable, Pratt suggests they increase their stakes. If he fails to identify it, he forfeits both his houses but, if he succeeds, he wins the hand of Schofield's delectable daughter in marriage. Despite the girl's protests, Schofield agrees to the wager.
Produced and Directed by David Blount
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
The ghost of a murdered man haunts the courtroom at the trial of his killer. Read by Adrian Scarborough.
A series of five tales of the supernatural by Charles Dickens:
'Trial for Murder' (1865) and 'The Signal Man' (1866) were conceived as stand-alone short stories.
'A Madman's Manuscript' (the Old Clergyman's Tale) and 'The Queer Chair' (The Bagman's story) are extracted from the 'The Pickwick Papers', the first of Dickens major novels, written in 1836, when he was just 24.
'Chips' (the nurse's tale) is extracted from 'The Uncommercial Traveller', a collection of literary sketches and reminiscences, written between 1860 and 1869, which was first published as a complete set in 1875 posthumously.
Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Pier Productions.
Sue MacGregor and her guests - writer and documentary film-maker, Jon Ronson and chief executive of AOL UK, Karen Thomson - discuss favourite books by Anna Funder, George Saunders and Christopher Brookmyre. From 2005.
Stasiland by Anna Funder
Publisher: Granta
Pastoralia by George Saunders
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre
Publisher: Abacus.
An old flame pits spinmeisters Charles and Martin against one another. Stars Stephen Fry and Tamsin Greig. From February 2001.
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis talk about what might happen in 2018, there's a look at Emerson Mnangagwa's first weeks as President of Zimbabwe from Daliso Chaponda, and Kiri Pritchard-McLean asks if Peppa Pig is causing trouble for the NHS. John O'Farrell joins to discuss his new book Things Can Only Get Worse? And Jake Yapp distills every Christmas song ever into one adorable pop hit. Featuring voices and impressions from Thomas Nelstrop.
Produced by Victoria Lloyd
A BBC Studios Production.
Enjoy a display for the worst-selling author of Victorian times. Star Marcus Brigstocke and Danny Robins. From March 2005.
Phone threats and an acid attacker - can VI Warshawski halt the Corpus Christi takeover of Ajax and finally prove who murdered Agnes..?
Sara Paretsky's thriller stars Kathleen Turner as Chicago private eye, VI Warshawski.
With Martin Shaw as Roger Ferrant, Maurice Denham as Uncle Stefan, Avril Clark as Gabriella, John Bennett as O'Faolin, Helen Horton as Mrs Paciorek, Miriam Karlin as Lotty Herschel, Don Fellows as Father Carroll, Colin McFarlane as Walter Novick, Kerry Shale as Murray Ryerson, Eileen Way as Rosa, Colin Stinton as Father Pelly and Norman Jones as Dr Paciorek.
Sara Paretsky created one of the most popular female sleuths in modern crime fiction. Her heroine, VI Warshawski, is a strong female character in a male-dominated world. VI is comfortable packing heat and trailing nasty suspects but she never loses touch with her basic femininity. Paretsky says of her Warshawski: "I was troubled by the way women were portrayed in (detective fiction) they always seemed either evil or powerless. I thought it was time for a tough, smart, likeable female private investigator".
Kathleen Turner also starred in the same role in the 1991 film 'VI Warshawski'.
Dramatised by Michelene Wandor.
Director: Janet Whitaker
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1991.
Novelist Alexander McCall Smith has converted a disused garage in Gaborone, Botswana, into an opera house and is training local people to sing in its opening production, a new opera he has written about baboons.
Pauline McLean charts the progress of this wacky project with McCall Smith himself, Botswana's ex-minster of health and the country's only semi-professional baritone, a schoolteacher named Gape Motswaledi, who believes that there is a career to be made from the venture.
Guests are like Fish by Shelagh Stephenson
When ANNA and JIM left London to move to the country, they blithely issued invitations to come up and see us any time to all and sundry.
Unfortunately, most of those who take them at their word are the ones they never in a million years dreamt would turn up, with predictably disastrous results.
Each weekend, over 4 episodes, a different couple pitches up on their doorstep demanding food, more food, wine and roaring fires, when what they really need is prolonged therapy. And each week Anna and Jim swear they'll never do it again...Guests, like fish, tend to go off after three days.
Directed and producer by: Eoin O'Callaghan
A Big Fish production for BBC Radio 4.
Mark Steel's In Town - Matlock and Matlock Bath
Mark Steel returns to Radio 4 with the 8th series of his award winning show that travels around the country visiting towns that have nothing in common but their uniqueness. After thoroughly researching each town, Mark writes and performs a bespoke evening of comedy for the local residents.
In this episode Mark visits the lovely Derbyshire towns of Matlock and Matlock Bath.
Matlock Bath is a seaside town that is nowhere near the sea. Here, Mark visits the National Stone Centre, where there aren't any stones. And he has fish and chips in a chip shop, of which there are hundreds. He also takes a trip up the cable cars to The Heights of Abraham and he talks to a man who is the only human ever to enter the Bonsall World Championship Hen Races.
Written and performed by ... Mark Steel
Additional material by ... Pete Sinclair
Production co-ordinator ... Hayley Sterling
Sound Manager ... Jerry Peal
Producer ... Carl Cooper
Picture Credit ... Tom Stanier.
Doddy's gardening tips from Ivor Lupin and meet the world's worst ape-man.
Starring Ken Dodd.
With Judith Chalmers, John Slater, Patricia Hayes, Peter Hudson, Wallas Eaton and Percy Edwards.
Music from Brian Poole and The Tremeloes.
BBC Revue Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Lockyer
Script by Ken Dodd and Eddie Braben.
Producer: Bill Worsley
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in July 1964.
Grumbling Hampshire locals oppose the bungling duo's plans for a river crossing.
A weekly tribute to all those who work in government departments.
Stars Richard Murdoch and Deryck Guyler. With Norma Ronald, Ronald Baddiley and John Graham.
Written by Edward Taylor and John Graham.
'The Men from the Ministry' ran for 14 series between 1962 and 1977. Deryck Guyler replaced Wilfrid Hyde-White from 1966. Sadly many episodes didn't survive in the archive, however the BBC's Transcription Service re-recorded 14 shows in 1980 - never broadcast in the UK, until the arrival of BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Producer: Edward Taylor
First broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 in March 1973.
The comedian shares his thoughts on money and shopping.
Six-part series illustrating the Domedic minutiae of life.
Stand-up and sketches with Simon Greenall, Sally Grace and Dave Lamb.
Producer: Maria Esposito
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2000.
There's financial disarray as the debts mount up for young Lord Rowcester.
Could a diamond pendant, the Charleston, the Derby or the spider-sequence be the answer? Can Jeeves find a solution to dazzle and amaze us?
An all-star cast brings PG Wodehouse's comedy thriller to galloping life.
Stars Martin Jarvis as Jeeves, Rufus Sewell as Rory, Joanne Whalley as Monica, Ian Ogilvy as Captain Biggar, Jamie Bamber as Bill, Moira Quick as Jill, Daisy Hydon as Ellen, Christopher Neame as Colonel Wyvern, Darren Richardson as Bulstrode and Matthew Wolf as the Commentator.
Dramatised by Archie Scottney.
Director: Rosalind Ayres
A Jarvis and Ayres production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in 2014.
The second part of 'A Christmas Memory', one of Truman Capote's favourite stories.
In the woods, Buddy and Miss Sook search for a tree. '"It should be" muses my friend, "twice as tall as a boy. So a boy can't steal the star." The one we pick is twice as tall as me.'
Read by Kerry Shale
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.
Lost and Found by Ian Kershaw
A tender and humorous drama about how a father and daughter explore the memories of the past in order to connect in the present.
Producer/Drirector Gary Brown
Tom Courtenay needs no introduction. He first came to prominence in the sixties with iconic movies such as 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner', 'Billy Liar' and 'Dr Zhivago'. In the 1980s he was acclaimed for his performance in 'The Dresser' with Albert Finney. Recently he has been in the West End portraying the poet Philip Larkin in a one man show 'Pretending To Be Me'. He was knighted in 2001.
Ian Kershaw has a wealth of experience in TV, Radio and Theatre. He is a graduate of the BBC Writers' Academy and has written for EastEnders, Holby City, Casualty and Shameless. Filming has just finished on his BBC TV drama 'Castles in the Sky' about Robert Watson-Watt, the father of radar, which stars Eddie Izzard. 'Lost and Found' was inspired by his wife Julie's relationship with her father John Hesmondhalgh.
Lord Darlington asks Stevens to make changes to the staff, which leads to a clash with Miss Kenton. Read by John Moffatt. From January 1990.
In the seventh programme in his series describing the gathering history of the Christmas Carol in Great Britain Jeremy Summerly returns to the Gallery tradition that was squeezed out of 19th century Church worship but steadfastly refused to die. It's now in rude health in several parts of the country but nowhere is it more energetically sustained than in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire. With the guidance of Dr Ian Russell who holds folk carol festivals and the enthusiasm of pub carolers who sustain the tradition Jeremy shares a pint and a clutch of fuguing carols which flower happily in the 21st century while having roots in the 18th and 19th.
He also finds out about an American offshoot of the gallery style that's been preserved in the icy blasts of Pennsylvannia USA since it was first seeded there in the middle of the 19th century.
Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.
Producer:Tom Alban.
The Dombeys return from their honeymoon and embark upon a frosty married life. Stars Robert Glenister and Helen Schlesinger. From December 2007.
The collection of essays by acclaimed editor and author Diana Athill.
Written from the vantage point of her great age, Athill's writing is honest and thought-provoking. In this second essay, "Alive Alive Oh!", she describes with total candour her miscarriage in 1960, aged 43, when she nearly lost her life.
Diana Athill's books include Stet: An Editor's Life (2000) and Yesterday Morning (2002). For fifty years she was the editorial director of André Deutsch, where she worked with such authors as Jean Rhys, Gitta Sereny and V. S. Naipaul. Her Costa Award-winning memoir, Somewhere Towards the End, was published in January 2008.
Photo credit: Mark Crick
Written by Diana Athill
Read by Stephanie Cole
Abridged by Claire Simpson
Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.
On Jay Rayner's menu are Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Anissa Helou, Matthew Fort and Clarissa Dickson Wright. From September 2003.
Ben would like to swap his daughter for a Porsche. Or is private education the answer? With Paula Wilcox. From November 1982.
A series of stories by Roald Dahl
Dramatised by Stephen Sheridan.
Episode 2: The Way Up To Heaven
Charles Dance leads the cast as the urbane Storyteller in dramatisations of five classic tales by Roald Dahl. Bizarre and amusing by turns, these black comedies are justly famous for their surprise endings.
The stories show Dahl at the height of his powers as a writer of adult fiction. They are stylishly plotted, vividly characterised and made unforgettable by their breezy cynicism, presenting as they do, a hilariously bleak view of family life. Their satisfying conclusions invariably leave bullies, schemers, adulterers and frauds soundly punished.
In The Way Up To Heaven, despite living in a New York mansion so vast that it requires its own elevator, the Fosters are not a happy couple. Mrs Foster has a pathological fear of being late and her husband deliberately torments her by doing everything as slowly as he can. When she accepts an invitation to visit France, he insists on taking her to the airport only to leave her waiting outside in the car. Nearly hysterical, she goes to see what's keeping him but, when she reaches the front door, she hears a particular sound and realises, if she's cunning, she need never be late again..
Produced and Directed by David Blount
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
A ship's carpenter attempts to break his pact with the Devil. Read by Adrian Scarborough.
Extracted from 'The Uncommercial Traveller', a collection of literary sketches and reminiscences, written by Dickens between 1860 and 1869, and first published posthumously as a complete set in 1875.
One of five tales of the supernatural by Charles Dickens.
Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Pier Productions.
Harry Secombe's daughter chats to Sally Magnusson about growing up with her versatile, funny father. From August 2006.
Richard Herring's Objective
Episode 3: 'Page 3'
Richard Herring examines 'Page 3' which has been the cause of controversy, debating whether it's something that we should celebrate, or consign to the dustbin of history.
Written by and starring Richard Herring, with Emma Kennedy and special guest, the glamour model Lucy Pinder.
Produced by Tilusha Ghelani
The second series of Richard Herring's Objective pokes and prods a variety controversial objects and see if the controversy falls out. Through vox pops, interviews and stand up comedy Richard examines the objects' history, meaning and significance and challenges our assumed logic and stereotypes. Can we reclaim these objects away from their unfortunate associations?
In series one the comedian investigated 'The Hitler Moustache', 'The Hoodie' and 'The St. George's Flag' and in the new series he'll be training his beady eye on 'The Golliwog', 'The Wheelchair', 'Page 3' and 'The Old School Tie'.
Jessica Fostekew chats to stand-up and Infinite Monkey Cage-r, Robin Ince.
In the Tower of Tests, Sam loses a pal. But is death the end? Fantasy comedy starring Darren Boyd and Dave Lamb. From May 2009.
Lucy Montgomery's Variety Pack is a multi-paced, one woman Fast Show for BBC Radio 4 showcasing the exceptional talent of Lucy Montgomery. Featuring Lucy Montgomery, Philip Pope, Sally Grace, Waen Shepherd and Natalie Walter.
Written by Lucy Montgomery with additional material by Steven Burge, Jon Hunter and Joe Wilkinson.
Music by Philip Pope
Produced by Katie Tyrrell
Lucy Montgomery is a rare and multifaceted performer. Like Paul Whitehouse, she's a true chameleon who can embrace any character with uncanny accuracy, from a non-stop chattering public school girl to an 80-year-old diva. Laugh-out-loud, mainstream funny in attitude, her intelligence and Barry Humphries-esque glee give her characterisations a smart and distinctive edge that's hugely appealing to young and old alike.
Lucy's honed her talents on Radio 4 shows as diverse as the Sony Gold winning Down the Line, The Museum of Everything, The Department, Another Case of Milton Jones, Mastering the Universe, Torchwood, The Don't Watch With Mother Sketchbook and The Way We Live Right Now. On television she has made her mark on BBC THREE's TittyBangBang, BBC ONE's Armstrong and Miller, and - coming soon to BBC TWO - Bellamy's People.
Episode 1 of a new production of a vintage radio serial from 1946.
From 1938 to 1968, Francis Durbridge's incomparably suave amateur detective Paul Temple and his glamorous wife Steve solved case after baffling case in one of BBC radio's most popular series. Sadly, only half of Temple's adventures survive in the archives.
In 2006 BBC Radio 4 brought one of the lost serials back to life with Crawford Logan and Gerda Stevenson as Paul and Steve. Using the original scripts and incidental music, and recorded using vintage microphones and sound effects, the production of 'Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery' aimed to sound as much as possible like the 1947 original might have done if its recording had survived. The serial proved so popular that it was soon followed with equal success by two more revivals, 'Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery' and 'Paul Temple and Steve'.
Now, from 1946, it's the turn of 'A Case for Paul Temple', in which Paul and Steve brave great danger to reveal the identity of the mysterious West End drug dealer known only as 'Valentine'.
Episode 1: In Which Paul Temple Hears About Valentine
Ten apparent suicides in one single week, and all of them drug addicts.
Scotland Yard is desperate for Temple's help.
Paul Temple CRAWFORD LOGAN
Steve GERDA STEVENSON
Sir Graham GARETH THOMAS
Major Peters GREG POWRIE
Supt. Wetherby RICHARD GREENWOOD
Sheila Baxter MELODY GROVE
Snooker Riley JIMMY CHISHOLM
Charles Kelvin NICK UNDERWOOD
Joy LUCY PATERSON
Producer Patrick Rayner
Francis Durbridge, the creator of Paul Temple, was born in Hull in 1912 and died in 1998. He one of the most successful novelists, playwrights and scriptwriters of his day.
Domestic dogs and leisure horses have never had it so good, but why do we spend so much money on them? From hair extensions to formulated feeds, sorbet to scones, not forgetting the "bling" and Santa outfits, it seems there is nothing an owner can't buy these days for their treasured animal companion.
Dylan Winter explores what's changed in our life alongside these animals to account for such pampering and expenditure. Amongst the aisles of an equestrian megastore and the trade stands at Crufts, he tackles the light-of-purse owners now weighed down with shopping bags to find out what they are prepared to spend and why, what's truly necessary and what's not. Dylan also asks anthrozoologists and psychologists about the origins and psychology of the complex and quirky bonds humans can have with these animals.
Producer: Sheena Duncan
A Sheena Duncan Production for BBC Radio 4.
Management and publicity problems plague the return of duo Tommy and Sheila.
Winners of the 1962 Eurovision Song Contest, sweethearts Tommy Franklin and Sheila Parr are back in the limelight. The only snag is they can't stand the sight of each another...
Mike Coleman's sitcom stars June Whitfield and Roy Hudd.
With Pat Coombs, Julian Eardley, Joshua Henderson, Edward Halsted, Rachel Smith and Jenny Lee.
Singers: John Barr and Lisa Peace.
Music by Frido Ruth.
Producer: Steve Doherty
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 1998.
Jeremy Hardy returns with his brand new series that not only seconds that emotion, but explains it too. In this show, Jeremy is feeling... happy.
Radio 4's most passionate polemicist returns to the airwaves with a new format which promises to be both personal and profound, and to present sides of Jeremy you won't have heard before. He may even sing. (He won't sing.)
The News Quiz and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" regular, proud progenitor of ten series of Jeremy Hardy Speaks To The Nation, and winner of numerous awards and almost certainly the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Jeremy is famous for lines like:
"Kids should never be fashion slaves, especially in the Far East. My 12-year old daughter asked me for a new pair of trainers. I told her she was old enough to go out and make her own."
and -
"Islam is no weirder than Christianity. Both are just Judaism with the jokes taken out."
His unique world view once lead him to be likened to "an incendiary vicar". Gillian Reynolds called him, "an idealist, a dissenter, a polemicist and moralist - he's a salutary reminder that jokes can, and should, be about big things."
The show is produced by Jeremy's long-standing accomplice, David Tyler, whose radio credits include Cabin Pressure, Thanks A Lot, Milton Jones!, Marcus Brigstocke's The Brig Society, Kevin Eldon Will See You Now, Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive, Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off, The Castle, The 99p Challenge, Deep Trouble, My First Planet, Radio Active and Bigipedia. His TV credits include Paul Merton - The Series, Spitting Image, Absolutely, The Paul Calf Video Diary, Coogan's Run and exec producing Victoria Wood's dinnerladies.
Written by Jeremy Hardy
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
Povey probes the odd coincidence of Pertwee's liaison with a barmaid - and a snack order.
Starring Leslie Phillips as the Sub-Lieutenant, Jon Pertwee as the Chief Petty Officer, Stephen Murray as Number One, Richard Caldicot as Commander Povey, Ronnie Barker as AS Johnson,Heather Chasen as Heather, Michael Bates as Ginger, Tenniel Evans as Goldstein and June Tobin as Maisie.
The Navy Lark ran for an impressive 13 series on BBC Radio between 1959 and 1976.
Scripted by Lawrie Wyman.
Producer: Alastair Scott Johnston.
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in January 1960.
As Helen prepares to go away to celebrate her mother's birthday, David fears for his marriage...
Terry Gregson's sitcom stars Rodney Bewes as David Parkinson, Ann Bell as Helen Parkinson, Daphne Oxenford as Mrs Henderson, Marlene Sidaway as Mrs Wilshaw and Peter Wheeler as the Doctor.
Produced at BBC Manchester by Ron McDonnell.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in February 1981.
Simon Mayo hosts the three-way battle between the comedy generations to find out which is the funniest. Will it be the Up-and-Comers, the Current Crop or the Old Guard who will be crowned, for one week at least, as the Golden Age of Comedy. This week Jon Richardson is joined by Carl Donnelly, Lucy Porter is joined by Justin Edwards and Tom O'Connor teams up with Norman Lovett.
Devised and Produced by Ashley Blaker and Bill Matthews.
The sofa hosts invite a stressed bomb disposal expert to "hug his fear".
Series 2 of Bill Dare's sitcom stars Robert Duncan and Jan Ravens.
With Roger Blake, Bill Dare, Alistair McGowan and Sally Philips.
Music by Mark Burton.
Producer: Jo Clegg
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 1997.
Norfolk, 1947: A parson tries to find the true meaning of Christmas.
In Wynyard Browne's classic stage play - dramatised by Jonathan Hall - the Magic of Christmas works in mysterious ways - in this feel good, festive treat.
Starring Kenneth Alan Taylor as Gregory, Susannah Harker as Margaret, Eve Best as Jenny, Matthew Pidgeon as David, Maureen Toal as Bridget, Ann Rye as Lydia and Philip Voss as Richard.
Director: Polly Thomas
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Day in 2005.
'The Thanksgiving Visitor,' Part 1. Sook invites Buddy's worst enemy to their special dinner.
'Talk about mean! Odd Henderson was the meanest human creature in my experience ... alas I was the object of his relentless attentions.'
Read by Kerry Shale
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.
Wednesday with Strangers
When a welcome pack to the UK offers advice on how to talk to strangers, a migrant worker decides to spend his one day off each week attempting to get to know the people of Britain and prove to his disillusioned flatmate that there is such a thing as the British Dream after all. A gentle comedy of manners by Nick Leather.
Mirek...............Matt McGuirk
Alex............... Eddie Capli
Andy..............James Quinn
Frank...............Greg Wood
Joy.................Sue Kelly
Producer Gary Brown.
As Stevens reflects on his service to Lord Darlington, he begins to question if it was in a worthy cause. Read by John Moffatt. From January 1990.
In the eighth programme of his series charting the development of the Christmas Carol in Britain Jeremy Summerly reaches the critical moment at which the 19th century enthusiasm for carols sung in church resulted in a vehicle in which they could take a leading role. It was developed by Bishop Benson of Truro who, in 1880 found himself holding services in a huge wooden shed while a new cathedral was being built next door. To celebrate the new diocese and capture the enthusiasm he recognise in the nonconformist tradition of carol singing in Cornwall, Benson developed a narrative service running from Adam's original sin to the birth of Christ and the impact of the word made flesh.
Jeremy visits Truro and then follows Benson's service to the moment in 1918 when a war-wearied Dean of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, Erich Milner-White decided to use the service as part of his college's Christmas celebrations. The changes he made survive to this day.
Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.
Producer:Tom Alban.
Edith Dombey tries to reason with her husband. Stars Robert Glenister and Helen Schlesinger. From December 2007.
Stephanie Cole reads from the collection of essays by the acclaimed editor and writer Diana Athill.
Written from the vantage point of her great age, Athill's writing is cheering and thought-provoking. In this third essay, "The Decision", she explains the process by which she relinquished her independence and moved into a residential care home in north London.
Photo credit: Mark Crick
Written by Diana Athill
Read by Stephanie Cole
Abridged and Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.
A series of stories by Roald Dahl
Dramatised by Stephen Sheridan.
Episode 3: The Hitchhiker
Charles Dance leads the cast as the urbane Storyteller in dramatisations of five classic tales by Roald Dahl. Bizarre and amusing by turns, these black comedies are justly famous for their surprise endings.
The stories show Dahl at the height of his powers as a writer of adult fiction. They are stylishly plotted, vividly characterised and made unforgettable by their breezy cynicism, presenting as they do, a hilariously bleak view of family life. Their satisfying conclusions invariably leave bullies, schemers, adulterers and frauds soundly punished.
In The Hitchhiker, Andrew Pym, a successful author, is driving to London in his brand new BMW. He stops to give a hitchhiker a lift. Unwisely, he allows the man to persuade him to see if the car can go as fast as its manufacturers claim. Stopped for speeding, his details are noted down by a policeman who warns him to expect a heavy fine and sends him on his way. Blithely unconcerned at causing so much trouble, the hitchhiker starts boasting that he is engaged in a line of work that requires exceptional skills. And it's these skills that can get Andrew out of his present difficulty.
Produced and directed by David Blount
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
A railway signalman at an isolated station has terrifying premonitions of future tragedies. Read by Adrian Scarborough.
Conceived by Dickens as a stand-alone short story and published in 1866.
One of five tales of the supernatural by Charles Dickens.
Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Pier Productions.
1/2
Graham Lyle has written songs for some of the biggest names in pop music.
Tina Turner, Michael Jackson and Art Garfunkel have all recorded songs he's had a hand in.
Born in Bellshill near Glasgow Graham first performed in a local soul band along with Benny Gallagher.
Signed by Paul McCartney as staff writers for Apple Records, Graham and Benny moved to London where they wrote songs for the likes of Mary Hopkin.
In the late 1960's Graham and Benny joined McGuinness Flint and they wrote the band's most successful songs, 'When I'm Dead and Gone' and 'Malt and Barley Blues'.
As Gallagher and Lyle they enjoyed chart success in the 1970's with songs like 'Heart on My Sleeve' and 'I Wanna Stay with You'.
After the partnership with Benny ended Graham went on to write many hit songs and BBC Radio Scotland presenter Tom Morton says 'he could be the most successful pop songwriter ever to come out of Scotland'.
Back together again with Benny Gallagher they are to tour again and have dates in Scotland this March.
Graham tells Tom Morton about his extraordinary career in the music industry, how he still loves to write songs and how he's looking forward again to hitting the road and touring as Gallagher and Lyle.
From radical self-defence ideas to telling all on the splits in his own band.
The self-styled Urban Warrior presents a festive mix of comedy and music - from punk to 1980s and 90s chart and subverted Christmas favourites.
With Peter Baynham, Mandy Knight, Paul Tonkinson and Peter Serafinowicz.
Alan Parker sets out to subvert the system and spread his indoctrination - only held back by his wide ignorance and dumb diatribes.
Created by Simon Munnery, the revolutionary set out to make BBC Radio 1 FM more subversive and left-wing, though the station tried to make him go home quietly and have an early night instead.
Simon Munnery was crowned 'Newcomer of the Year' at the 1994 Sony Radio Awards for his creation and portrayal of Radio 1's cult comedy hero.
Producer: Aled Evans
First broadcast on BBC Radio 1 on Boxing Day 1994.
by Neil Warhurst with additional material by Paul Barnhill
Episode 3
Anthony Head leads a team of brilliantly stupid scientists in Clayton Grange, a top secret Scientific Institute at the top of the hill behind the supermarket; with a government brief to think the unthinkable. This week, the team attempt to make war just a bit more gentle. Meet the scientists who are a bit rubbish at life. And not much better at science.
Saunders ..... Anthony Head
Geoff ..... Neil Warhurst
Roger ..... Paul Barnhill
Jameson ..... Stephanie Racine
Lionel ..... Don Gilet
Alan Dobson ..... Paul Stonehouse
Producer/Director ..... Marion Nancarrow.
Episode 2 of a new production of a vintage serial from 1946.
From 1938 to 1968, Francis Durbridge's incomparably suave amateur detective Paul Temple and his glamorous wife Steve solved case after baffling case in one of BBC radio's most popular series. Sadly, only half of Temple's adventures survive in the archives.
In 2006 BBC Radio 4 brought one of the lost serials back to life with Crawford Logan and Gerda Stevenson as Paul and Steve. Using the original scripts and incidental music, and recorded using vintage microphones and sound effects, the production of 'Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery' aimed to sound as much as possible like the 1947 original might have done if its recording had survived. The serial proved so popular that it was soon followed with equal success by two more revivals, 'Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery' and 'Paul Temple and Steve'.
Now, from 1946, it's the turn of 'A Case for Paul Temple', in which Paul and Steve pursue the mysterious West End drug dealer known only as 'Valentine'...
Episode 2: In Which Steve Meets Captain O'Hara
Temple's investigations lead him to a Limehouse pub for a drink with a very Irish sailor, and then to a chilling discovery in a lonely quarry.
Paul Temple CRAWFORD LOGAN
Steve GERDA STEVENSON
Sir Graham GARETH THOMAS
Major Peters GREG POWRIE
Supt. Wetherby RICHARD GREENWOOD
Snooker Riley JIMMY CHISHOLM
Charles Kelvin NICK UNDERWOOD
Captain O'Hara ROBIN LAING
Mary ELIZA LANGLAND
Sheila Baxter MELODY GROVE
Sir Gilbert Dryden MICHAEL MACKENZIE
Producer Patrick Rayner
Francis Durbridge, the creator of Paul Temple, was born in Hull in 1912 and died in 1998. He one of the most successful novelists, playwrights and scriptwriters of his day.
Gareth Malone explores how man developed the vocal capability to sing. He investigates how singing as we know it today began hundreds of millions of years ago and how prehistoric man used a type of vocal communication which could be called the precursor of singing. He finds out how this changed and developed as man evolved and explores what this tells us about human communication and how our relationship with song has grown out of moments in early history.
The news that their best friends are expecting a second baby sparks an unexpected reaction in Lucy. In desperation, Daniel turns to his mother-in-law for help...
The second series of David Spicer's comedy drama about modern life and parenthood, as seen through the eyes of two 30-something non-parents.
Starring David Tennant as Daniel, Liz Carling as Lucy, Samantha Spiro as Katie, Tony Gardner as Andy, Sally Grace as Mary and Bill Fellows as Frank.
Producer: Liz Anstee
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2002.
Susan Calman is the least relaxed person she knows. She has no down time, no hobbies (unless you count dressing up your cats in silly outfits) and her idea of relaxation is to sit on her sofa playing Assassin's Creed, an hour into which she is in a murderous rage with sky high blood pressure. Her wife had to threaten to divorce her to make her go on holiday, and she's been told by the same long-suffering wife that unless she finds a way to switch off, and soon, she's going to be unbearable.
Susan decided her best bet was to try to immerse herself in the pursuits that her friends find relaxing, to find her inner zen and outer tranquillity. In the first series of this show she attempted to ditch the old Susan Calman and attempted to find the new Susan Calm, by watching Cricket; going Hillwalking; visiting an Art Gallery and being spontaneous. She enjoyed these pursuits, but all too soon found herself slipping back into her old ways. So she's trying again. This week she takes a trip to the Latitude Festival with Robin Ince, to try and understand why all her friends think a weekend of noisy camping is a relaxing way to spend their time.
In other episodes Susan will learn about gardening with Val McDermid, try her hand at baking with Selasi Gbmormittah and have a go at birdwatching with Emma Kennedy.
Keep Calman Carry On is an audience stand up show in which Susan reports on how successful she's been - both at relaxing and at the pursuit itself - as well as playing in and discussing a handful of illustrative clips from her efforts. It's an attempt to find out how people find solace or sanctuary in these worlds and how Susan can negotiate her own place in them.
Written by Susan Calman and Jon Hunter.
Produced by Lyndsay Fenner.
A BBC Studios Production.
Jennifer puts in a lot of subtle work to remind Henry of their Crystal Wedding Anniversary ... and then makes a discovery which causes her to do a bit of back pedalling - like crazy!
Starring Wendy Craig as Jennifer Corner and Francis Matthews as Henry Corner.
The comedy mishaps of the Corner family: Jennifer and Henry and their three children Trudi, Amanda and Robin. Family sitcom, Not in Front of the Children originally ran for four series from 1967 to 1970 on BBC TV. Richard Waring adapted his own scripts for this radio version, now fully restored from the original reel-to-reel tapes.
Wendy Craig won a Best Actress BAFTA award for the TV version of Not in Front of the Children in 1969. This was the first of several housewife roles that Wendy Craig was to play on television. Later series included And Mother Makes Three and Butterflies.
Music by Ronnie Hazlehurst
Producer: Trafford Whitelock.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 1969.
In light of a festive pudding shortage for forces overseas, Neddie Seagoon takes action. Soon Richard Dimbleby is reporting on the giant Christmas pudding being mixed at dry dock in Chatham.
With Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers. Written by Spike Milligan and Larry Stephens.
This programmes was made for BBC General Overseas Service and broadcast as a Christmas Special for troops in 1956. It did not gain a UK broadcast until 25/12/1986 on BBC Radio 4.
Edward Seckerson chairs the last of the semi-finals in the music quiz with Devon's Sheila Altree, David Borrill from East Riding and Stockport's John Wrigley. From June 2007.
Mr Sims is elected to co-ordinate the school's festivities, but he doesn't spot the 'banana skin'.
Created by Jim Eldridge, ten series of this comedy about a junior school ran between 1985 and 1998. King Street Junior Revisited ran from 2002 to 2005.
Written by Paul Copley.
Stars Karl Howman as Mr Sims, James Grout as the Headmaster, Tom Watson as Mr Holiday, Margaret John as Mrs Stone, Paul Copley as Mr Long, Deirdre Costello as Mrs Patterson, Vivienne Martin as Mrs Rudd, Marlene Sidaway as Miss Lewis, Kemal Ibrahim as Andy, Sarah Harvey-Smart as Tanita, Anna Williams as Paula, Ben Wint as Martin,Adam Dean as Rajid and Michaela Strachan as herself.
Producer: John Fawcett Wilson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 1992.
4 Extra Debut. Life takes an unexpected turn when Newland Archer meets his fiancee's unconventional cousin. Stars Eleanor Bron. From January 2008.
'The Thanksgiving Visitor' Part 2.
'I felt Odd Henderson before I saw him: with the sense of peril that warns an experienced woodsman say of an impending encounter with a bobcat. To others he must have seemed simply a grubby twelve-year-old boy. But to me he was as sinister as a genie released from a bottle.'
Read by Kerry Shale
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.
The last ever Christmas story written by Charles Dickens is a vivid portrait of a man tormented by his past.
Stars John Moffatt as Charles Dickens, Michael Tudor Barnes as Redlaw, Dilys Laye as Milly Swidger, Ronald Herdman as William Swidger, Godfrey Kenton as Philip Swidger, Timothy Carlton as George Swidger, Timothy Alcock as Adolphus Tetterby, Maxine Audley as Sophie Tetterby, Stuart Heath as Johnny Tetterby, Andrew Wincott as Denham, Winston Eade as Adolphus Tetterby Jnr and Rikki Belsham as the Boy.
Dramatised by Jill Brookes.
Producer: Kay Patrick
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1990.
Stevens's professional calm is interrupted by a new guest, and a momentous meeting with Miss Kenton. Read by John Moffatt. From February 1990.
The penultimate programme in Jeremy Summerly's series tracing the history of the Christmas Carol in Britain. Jeremy picks up the story in the first half of the 20th century with carols from all over the world becoming more popular in this country much to the irritation of Ralph Vaughan Williams who continued to champion the folk tradition, albeit in a refined choral form. This was a time when the grandeur of Victorian caroling gave way to a leaner aesthetic with the Oxford Book of Carols being published in 1928, the same year in which the BBC broadcast the King's College, Cambridge Nine Lessons and Carols for the very first time. As it became an established favourite the carols used, gathered in many cases over centuries, become known both nationally and indeed internationally.
Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. This series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.
Producer:Tom Alban.
Dombey engages Carker to act as intermediary with his wife. With Robert Glenister and Alex Jennings. From December 2007.
Stephanie Cole reads from the collection of essays by the acclaimed editor and writer Diana Athill.
Written from the vantage point of her great age, Athill's writing is honest, cheering and thought-provoking. In this fourth essay, "Dead Right", she examines her thoughts and feelings about death.
Photo credit: Mark Crick
Read by Stephanie Cole
Written by Diana Athill
Abridged and Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.
A series of stories by Roald Dahl
Dramatised by Stephen Sheridan.
Episode 4: Edward the Conqueror
Charles Dance leads the cast as the urbane Storyteller in dramatisations of five classic tales by Roald Dahl. Bizarre and amusing by turns, these black comedies are justly famous for their surprise endings.
The stories show Dahl at the height of his powers as a writer of adult fiction. They are stylishly plotted, vividly characterised and made unforgettable by their breezy cynicism, presenting as they do, a hilariously bleak view of family life. Their satisfying conclusions invariably leave bullies, schemers, adulterers and frauds soundly punished.
In Edward the Conqueror, Louisa, a retired piano teacher, takes in a stray cat. She is astonished at how happy it seems when she plays it some Liszt. Noticing that, like Liszt, it has warts on its face, she decides that it must be the re-incarnation of the great composer. Edward, her monstrously selfish husband, resents the cat's presence and is ruthlessly dismissive of her theories on its true identity. Unabashed, Louisa announces, to Edward's acute embarrassment, that she intends to make her findings public.
Produced and directed by David Blount
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
From his prison cell, a raving madman looks back on the horrific events that led him there. Read by Adrian Scarborough.
Extracted from the 'The Pickwick Papers', the first of Charles Dickens's major novels, written in 1836 when he was just 24.
One of five tales of the supernatural by Charles Dickens.
Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Pier Productions.
Viv Anderson, the first black footballer to play for England, talks to Matthew Parris about the life of Arthur Wharton, the first black professional player.
Arthur Wharton was born in Ghana in 1865. He came to England to study, but he very quickly started to gain a reputation as an athlete, winning the 100 metres in a world record time of ten seconds. He was a superb all-round athlete, and excelled in football and cricket.
In his career he played for Preston North End, Sheffield United, Rotherham Town, Stalybridge Celtic and Ashton North End. He ended his career at Stockport County in Division Two, and, for the remainder of his working life, he laboured as a colliery haulage hand in the pits.
Wharton came from a middle class background, but his choice of a life of sport meant that a career in civil service administration was quickly closed to him, He chose to do what he loved to do, but paid a terrible price. As his playing career collapsed, he developed a drink problem, and died a penniless alcoholic.
Thwarted by inertia, can Sean's unrealised dreams come true thanks to a local supermarket? With Peter Serafinowicz. From December 1999.
Jessica Fostekew chats to stand-up and Infinite Monkey Cage-r, Robin Ince.
Award winning comedian Sarah Millican is back for a second series playing Sarah, modern day agony aunt dishing out real advice for real people.
Solving the nations problems with her Support Group, she wants you to live life to the utmost, and she's got tons of ideas of how to help. Together with her team of experts of the heart - man of the people local cabbie Terry, and self qualified counsellor Marion - Sarah tackles the nation's problems head on and has a solution for everything, (which normally encompasses cake, tea and hugs).
This week the team tackle two problems - "It's me or the dog!" and "My phobias are out of control but I'm too scared to even admit it"
Sarah Millican Sarah
Ruth Bratt Marion
Simon Day Terry
Margaret Cabourn-Smith Laura
Harry Peacock Barry
Tim Key John.
The Show What You Wrote is a brand new sketch show, which is made up entirely from sketches sent in by the public. Recorded in Manchester in front of a live audience, and starring John Thomson, Helen Moon, Fiona Clarke and Gavin Webster.
We've picked the best sketches from thousands of submissions to make each show, and every week we'll be covering a different theme, from sci fi and fantasy, to kitchen sink drama. This week's episode is Crime and Thriller.
Script editor ...... Jon Hunter
Producers ..... Carl Cooper and Alexandra Smith
Written by ..... Jack Bernhardt, James Boughen. Peter Brush, Dominic Burgess, John Dennett, Richard Felber, Andy Fell, Robert Frimston & Edward Rowett, Stephen Holford, Caspian James, Nathan King, Nick Hall, Matt Oakley, John-Luke Roberts, Eddie Robson, Ash Williamson.
Episode 3 of a new production of a vintage serial from 1946.
From 1938 to 1968, Francis Durbridge's incomparably suave amateur detective Paul Temple and his glamorous wife Steve solved case after baffling case in one of BBC radio's most popular series. Sadly, only half of Temple's adventures survive in the archives.
In 2006 BBC Radio 4 brought one of the lost serials back to life with Crawford Logan and Gerda Stevenson as Paul and Steve. Using the original scripts and incidental music, and recorded using vintage microphones and sound effects, the production of 'Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery' aimed to sound as much as possible like the 1947 original might have done if its recording had survived. The serial proved so popular that it was soon followed with equal success by two more revivals, 'Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery' and 'Paul Temple and Steve'.
Now, from 1946, it's the turn of 'A Case for Paul Temple', in which Paul and Steve brave great danger to reveal the identity of the mysterious West End drug dealer known only as 'Valentine'.
Episode 3: In Which Sir Gilbert Explains
Steve has ulterior motives when she makes an appointment with Madame de Briac, one of Mayfair's most fashionable hairdressers.
Paul Temple CRAWFORD LOGAN
Steve GERDA STEVENSON
Sir Graham GARETH THOMAS
Major Peters GREG POWRIE
Supt. Wetherby RICHARD GREENWOOD
Mary ELIZA LANGLAND
Charles Kelvin NICK UNDERWOOD
Sheila Baxter MELODY GROVE
Captain O'Hara ROBIN LAING
Sir Gilbert Dryden MICHAEL MACKENZIE
Producer Patrick Rayner
Francis Durbridge, the creator of Paul Temple, was born in Hull in 1912 and died in 1998. He one of the most successful novelists, playwrights and scriptwriters of his day.
An exploration of female friendship through the moving stories of three sets of friends - when times are tough it's often friendships which sustain. This programme tells the story of three female friendships which have weathered the years. In a tie-in with Woman's Hour, we asked listeners to send their stories.
We hear from Jean and June, who first met in the ladies' at work 65 years ago; they started a business together, lived on a boat, then started a commune with husband and son and mother in tow; now, they are living next door to each other - widowed, with each other as company.
The second couple, Geraldine and Catherine, also built a business - but as it became more and more successful, the strains started to show. There was a rift, and then a rupture which lasted ten years. They tell the story of how and why they came back together.
Finally, we hear the extraordinary story of the most precious gift one friend can give another. Sue and Sarah were old friends; when Sarah's kidney began to fail, Sue decided the obvious thing was to donate one of hers. Sarah refused. Sue persisted, for two years. She won, the operation was a success, but how did it affect their relationship?
Through these stories we explore the complexity of female friendship: intimacy vs possessiveness; support vs competition. There's lots of affectionate bickering, and some music from Judy Garland.
Following on from this programme, a special edition of Woman's Hour will explore the psychology of female friendship from childhood through to old age.
Producers: Elizabeth Burke and Kim Normanton
A Loftus Audio production for BBC Radio 4.
Home at last, how will Julius Hutch come to terms with the bank that made him rich? Can he set himself up to live happily ever after?
Starring Peter Jones as Julius Hutch.
With Celestine Randall as Mrs Pauline Tone, Justine Midda as Kate, Peter Whitman as Peter Fang, Jeffrey Wickham as Sexton Lewis and Collin Johnson as the News Reader.
Scripted by Collin Johnson.
Producer: Andy Jordan
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 1995.
Martin Jarvis performs the second of two beloved Jeeves stories by P G Wodehouse in front of an enthusiastic, invited audience at the Riverhouse Barn Theatre, Walton on Thames in Surrey.
In Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit, Martin - as Bertie Wooster - recounts his visit to a Christmas Eve house party. There's seasonal high-jinks as Bertie's rival, Tuppy Glossop, is also a guest. Bertie is smitten with attractive Roberta Wickham. Jeeves doesn't approve. Old scores must be settled in the dead of night, involving a darning needle and a punctured hot-water bottle. But will things go according to plan? Ask Jeeves!
Director: Rosalind Ayres
A Jarvis and Ayres production for BBC Radio 4.
The transport cafe that discovered Haute Cuisine - and the "Grim" fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Green Witch.
More quick-fire sketches, terrible puns, humorous songs and parodies.
Stars Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, David Hatch, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie.
Written by Eric Idle, Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden and Andy Smith.
Originating from the Cambridge University Footlights revue 'Cambridge Circus', ISIRTA ran for 8 years on BBC Radio and quickly developed a cult following.
Music and songs by Dave Lee, Leon Cohen and Bill Oddie.
Producer: Humphrey Barclay
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in June 1967.
Single dad Bryan finds himself double-booked for the festivities...
Stars Richard Beckinsale as Bryan Archer, Pat Coombs as Mum/Albert, John Comer as Dad, Patricia Hayes as Gran, Celia Bannerman as Maureen and Kenneth Shanley as the Store Assistant.
Written by Jim Eldridge.
Producer: John Fawcett Wilson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in December 1977.
Dr Phil Hammond chairs the debating game with Tony Hawks, Simon Fanshawe, Steve Punt and Arthur Smith. From January 2000.
"It seemed a bit sad that we weren't doing the full Christmas bit this year, and I thought maybe it'd be a good idea if we had our own little Christmas lunch on Sunday..."
Sarah bickers with daughter Clare and mother Eleanor bicker over their festive planning.
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 Alan Thompson as the Customer.
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 December 1985.
Despite Newland's recent marriage to May, he is still consumed by thoughts of Ellen Olenska. Dramatisation of Edith Wharton's novel starring Ryan McCluskey. From January 2008.
From their aerial view, a beautiful statue and a swallow team up to help the poor in the city below. Read by John Moffatt. From December 1997.
Written by Lynne Truss.
Brighton, Christmas 1957 was memorable in all sorts of ways. It was the year of the Queen's first Christmas broadcast for one thing, as well as Mrs Groynes' first Christmas married to Captain Hoagland of the Royal Engineers.
A happy time then? Well, apparently not!
Music by Anthony May
Sound design by David Thomas.
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Stevens finally meets Miss Kenton, but the event makes him question the worthiness of his life's work. Read by John Moffatt. From February 1990.
Jeremy Summerly concludes his history of the carol in Britain pondering the success of new carols over the last century. While King's College, Cambridge organist Stephen Cleobury insures a supply of newly commissioned carols for his massive international audience Jeremy wonders whether the popular songs from Berlin's 'White Christmas' to Slade's 'Merry Christmas' don't help sustain a more genuine caroling tradition.
He also recalls his own first experience of carols at Lichfield cathedral where John Rutter's 'Shepherd's Pipe Carol' was an astonishing discovery for the eager young chorister.
And Jeremy also ponders the continued appeal of the carol and why, while it's been in decline throughout its history, it continues to thrive.
Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.
Producer:Tom Alban.
Edith is driven to extreme measures by Dombey's attempts to control her. Stars Robert Glenister and Helen Schlesinger. From December 2007.
Stephanie Cole reads from Diana Athill's essay collection.
Written from the vantage point of her great age, Athill's writing is honest, cheering and thought-provoking. In "A Life of Luxuries", she looks back on the things that have brought her simple pleasure through the different stages of her long life.
Photo credit: Mark Crick
Read by Stephanie Cole
Written by Diana Athill
Abridged and Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.
A series of stories by Roald Dahl
Episode 5: Neck
Charles Dance leads the cast as the urbane Storyteller in dramatisations of five classic tales by Roald Dahl. Bizarre and amusing by turns, these black comedies are justly famous for their surprise endings.
The stories show Dahl at the height of his powers as a writer of adult fiction. They are stylishly plotted, vividly characterised and made unforgettable by their breezy cynicism, presenting as they do, a hilariously bleak view of family life. Their satisfying conclusions invariably leave bullies, schemers, adulterers and frauds soundly punished.
In Neck, Sir Basil Turton, a wealthy newspaper magnate, has recently taken a young wife. Bossy and openly adulterous, the new Lady Turton is despised by Jelks, Sir Basil's butler, for her cruel treatment of his master. One morning she is openly frolicking with her latest lover in the grounds of the estate, when, for a joke, she sticks her head through a hole in one of Sir Basil's priceless Henry Moore sculptures. When she finds she is stuck, Sir Basil with Jelks' assistance, must decide on a course of action.
Produced and directed by David Blount
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Too many glasses of punch and Tom feels the queer chair in the room of his inn turn on him. Read by Adrian Scarborough.
Extracted from 'The Pickwick Papers', the first of Dickens major novels, written in 1836 when he was just 24.
The last of a series of five tales of the supernatural by Charles Dickens.
Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Pier Productions.
A rip-roaring Yuletide edition of the paper for boys. Starring Peter Baynham and Alistair McGowan. From December 1991.
Sheffield's aspiring singer/songwriter John Shuttleworth takes over the BBC airwaves. With John Kettley. From November 1998.
It Started in August
Celebrate Christmas with Radio 4's favourite curmudgeonly author, Ed Reardon, and his faithful companion Elgar.
It's Christmas Day and where is Ed Reardon spending it? The scepticism of his writing class back in August about where Ed would be hanging his stocking, wasn't entirely misplaced, and receiving a Christmas card from one's girlfriend signed without a kiss and her surname added in brackets probably doesn't bode well. However, all is not lost as Ed's jocular round robin email to his family inviting himself to join their Christmas celebrations wasn't all in vain - there was at least one member of the family who didn't bounce it back. So, following assurances that his requirements would be minimal, his levels of merriment would be Dionysian and a small caveat about what he regards as permissible Christmas viewing Ed is encouraged to think that he won't be spending Christmas alone. Or he could be looking at a day with only Elgar, an Oxo cube and a cinnamon stick.
Written by Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Douglas
Produced by Dawn Ellis.
Stephen K Amos is joined by stand-ups Marlon Davis, Jarlath Reagan and Lloyd Langford to consider the pros and cons of living with technology. Produced by Colin Anderson.