Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2026-01-09T17:53:48.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Small but mighty
items: Top Gear creator reacts to mania around beloved hosts: “Would I want any of that? Would I b****cks”
items: Strictly’s Shirley Ballas reveals she has joined famous dating app - and what age brackets she's looking at
items: Do no harm
items: Off the rails
items: Radio 4’s Derailed will explore “emotionally devastating” impact of HS2 railway project
items: Feats of Daring
items: Animal magic
items: Sunny side up
items: Café Hope host Rachel Burden: 'Bad news drives clicks – but people still want uplifting stories too'
items: Pass the conch
items: 'There's always unfinished business'
items: Spin, bias and sound bites
items: Words to the wise
items: Daisy May Cooper: 'I received a paranormal visit from late This Country co-star'
items: You have to laugh
items: Ralf Little on "slightly eerie" Death in Paradise Christmas special
items: Inside Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup
items: Fighting back: How DIY SOS helped Grenfell's community reclaim its world-class boxing heritage
items: "Jo was the only presenter I could imagine working with" – Simon Mayo and Jo Whiley prepare to co-present after Radio 2 shake up

Small but mighty
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: As country legend Dolly Parton turns 80, a host of stars line up to pay tribute to her unique talent
encoded: Dolly Parton: the Fans' Story is on Radio 2 on Saturday at 12 midnight. Add it to your collection It took some time before I realised what was so disquieting about Radio 2’s celebratory Dolly Parton: the Fans’ Story. It wasn’t the number or calibre of famous people lining up to pay obeisance to the “Queen of Country” – including musical A-listers from Deborah Harry to Melanie C and Gloria Estefan to Mark Ronson – or that words seemed not quite enough to pay the requisite amount of homage. Rather, it was the eerie feeling this was some kind of eulogy rather than a tribute to a woman who turns 80 on 19 January and who, if the preceding decades are anything to go by, has no intention of stopping any time soon. There is certainly a justification for outlining a short list of achievements that will humble anybody who simply thinks of Dolly Parton as the small woman with big hair famous for singing Jolene – a little number she wrote in 1973 that Rolling Stone magazine ranked as the “greatest country song of all time”. In fact, she has written more than 3,000 other songs and has been inducted into countless Halls of Fame, including those for Songwriters, Country, Rock ’n’ Roll and Gospel. Her songs include I Will Always Love You (24 million sales worldwide for Whitney Houston) and feminist anthem 9 to 5, from the soundtrack to the hit 1980 film of the same name in which she also co-starred with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. “When that came out,” reality TV star Michelle Visage tells Radio 2, “it was like, ‘Oh, she’s an actress as well.’ There isn’t much that Dolly Parton can’t do.” Visage continues: “She’s always been an icon to the LGBTQ+ community, because she did everything her way, and still does.” Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters agrees. “She’s got so many queer fans because she feels like family to us. She’s a self-professed weirdo herself, you know? She grew up feeling different. She was the one in the front yard singing to the chickens as a kid.” Shears’s mother hails …

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/01/03GettyImages-168583856-copy-351a854.jpg
width: 4070
height: 2713

Top Gear creator reacts to mania around beloved hosts: “Would I want any of that? Would I b****cks”
type: item
date: 2025-11-11T00:01:26.000Z
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: Entertainment
subject: TV
subject: BBC iPlayer
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Andy Wilman lifts the bonnet on the chaos, camaraderie and creation of TV’s biggest motoring show.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "If you had Ricky Gervais walking down one side of the street, and Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond walking down the other, everyone would be asking for selfies and autographs with those guys,” explains Andy Wilman, the executive producer of both Top Gear and its big-budget globe-trotting progeny Grand Tour. "Ricky Gervais is probably more famous, but people just wouldn’t go near him because he’s got a famous aura, whereas people would think, 'You three are in the studio talking about going to the pub and all that sort of thing, we know you and you absolutely belong to us.' The mania and the fan stuff around them was insane. There was no barrier. Would I want any of that? Would I bollocks." And so it comes of something of a surprise that the challenge-setter, mission-controller and arse-kicker-in-chief to the holy triumvirate should now break cover to write Mr Wilman’s Motoring Adventure – a memoir and insider’s account of life on both shows. "I’ve always agreed with Chris Blackwell [founder of Island Records], who gave Bob Marley and the Wailers to the world. When asked why there was no photograph of him with Marley he said, 'People behind the camera should stay behind the camera.' And that suited me because I was very comfortable with the effect my input was having and genuinely had no desire to be famous." The book has come about because "Jeremy kept getting asked to write about what was going on behind the scenes but said he couldn’t remember anything, and told the publisher to ask me to do it because I’ve got a better memory than him. I’m sure the accountants at Penguin would prefer to have Jeremy’s name on it but it’s mine," he smiles. "I agreed to do it because I wanted a sense of wrapping everything up [after The Grand Tour ended last year], a bit of catharsis, plus I wanted to do something that was not a collaboration like a TV show. My book, my rules. It’s nice to have a bit of control for …

the-grand-tour-1c45f4d.jpg
width: 3000
height: 2000

Strictly’s Shirley Ballas reveals she has joined famous dating app - and what age brackets she's looking at
type: item
date: 2025-09-01T20:00:09.000Z
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: Entertainment
subject: Reality TV
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: In her new book, Strictly’s head judge Shirley Ballas reveals how ballroom has helped to lift her out of some very dark places.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “Shut your gob and get on with it,” says Shirley Ballas. Time is obviously a precious commodity, as she rushes between appointments and meetings in the week the Strictly Come Dancing line-up has been announced ahead of the new series, which starts on 20 September. But the show’s head judge is not being rude; far from it. She’s just happily running through a few of the no-nonsense Northern aphorisms that introduce the chapters in her new book, Best Foot Forward: Life Lessons from the World of Dance. “There are others,” she continues. “‘Hang your problems at the door, pick them up on your way out’, ‘There should be no regrets in life, only lessons,’ and, ‘It’s all sent to test us’. I’ve used them because they are specialities of my 88-year-old mother Audrey, the woman who built the very foundations of my resilience.” Her latest book (she also has a successful line in cosy crime novels) is, she explains, a “continuation” of her 2020 autobiography Behind the Sequins: My Life. “I didn’t have the confidence back then to write some of the things that I’ve written now,” she says. “I’ve written about what’s happened in my life recently, but I’ve brought in a few other stories as well. I wanted it to be a collection of life lessons in confidence, resilience and self-belief, inspired by the world of dance.” It’s fair to say that she has needed all three of those qualities since that first autobiography five years ago: since then, she has called off an engagement, later ending that relationship; coped with her mother’s cancer scare; received counselling and support from the BBC in the wake of severe online trolling; and lived with the attention of a stalker, a situation that ultimately required legal intervention. All this while dealing with the menopause which, she writes, took her to “some terrible places in my head... there were times when I thought I’d be better off dead”. In response to all the above, and with no intenti…

490050-c69775b.jpg
width: 3233
height: 2155

Do no harm
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: New life-saving medicines require rigorous tests on humans — but how do we avoid a repeat of the “Elephant Man” drug trial?
encoded: The Drug Trial That Went Wrong is on Wednesday at 3.30pm Radio 4. Add it to your collection In March 2006, out-of-work actor Rob Oldfield was sitting with three strangers in a room at Northwick Park Hospital in north-west London, waiting to be injected with a drug known only as TGN1412. It was part of a clinical trial by Parexel, an American research organisation, on behalf of German biotech company TeGenero. Oldfield would receive £2,000 for taking part. The drug was administered at 8am, and soon after Oldfield began to feel cold. As his condition deteriorated, he vomited, and acute discomfort gave way to alarm when medical staff arrived with “life-support stuff” for one of the other trialists. The participants experienced a severe immune reaction known as a “cytokine storm”, leading to multiple organ failure, and were transferred to intensive care. Oldfield’s mother was advised to say goodbye to her son. Fortunately, after three weeks in hospital Oldfield made a full recovery. Others were less fortunate: one participant had his toes and parts of his fingers amputated. The incident received widespread media coverage, with sensational headlines such as “We saw human guinea pigs explode” and “My brain was on fire, my head had swollen… I was the ELEPHANT MAN”. The trial continues to be referred to in the media as the “Elephant Man” drug trial. As new regulations for running clinical trials are being rolled out for the first time since that watershed moment in British medical history, Dr Margaret McCartney presents The Drug Trial That Went Wrong on Radio 4. “What we wanted to do with this programme was be fair,” explains the Glasgow GP. “We have examined what happened and what the two sides of the argument are today in terms of innovation versus safety.” TGN1412 was designed to manipulate the immune system and was developed in the hope it would revolutionise treatment of leukaemia and rheumatoid arthritis. It had already passed animal testing; Oldfield and his cohort w…

Untitled-1-885de3d-e1755875355356.jpg
width: 3037
height: 1875

Off the rails
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Journalist Kate Lamble says the HS2 farrago is as much about the nuances of British democracy as it is about our ability to deliver big engineering projects
encoded: Derailed: the Story of HS2 is on Radio 4 at 1.45pm, Monday-Friday. Add it to your collection. You get this sharp intake of breath when you approach people about HS2,” says Kate Lamble, the presenter of a new Radio 4 series, Derailed: the Story of HS2. “They’re either people who have been personally affected and it’s been dominating their lives for over a decade, or it’s politicians for whom it was all important for a very brief period a long time ago. For many it’s been emotionally devastating.” Political instability and ephemeral ministers are, no surprise, key factors in the series. As it stands today, when “High Speed 2” is completed – at a date yet to be set – it will be Britain’s second purpose-built, high-speed railway after the London link to the Channel Tunnel (aka HS1) and will run between Birmingham and London. The original idea, conceived in 2009 under Gordon Brown, was to extend HS2 to Manchester and Leeds but this has since been cancelled. “Andrew Stephenson, the only dedicated HS2 minister who had been brought in by Boris Johnson at the Ministry of Transport in 2020, was in a factory looking at rolling stock when Boris called to inform him that he’d lost the leadership and said, ‘I’m out, you’re out, we’re all out’,” explains Lamble. This change of prime minister brought a big change in approach. Johnson was determined the project would succeed and had said, “The Treasury must not prevail in terms of HS2,” but former chancellor Rishi Sunak took a view that the cost should not outweigh the benefit and curtailed the line accordingly. “As with Grenfell Tower,” says Lamble, who won an Aria award for her in-depth coverage of that Inquiry, “it’s a long, involved story that hasn’t really translated in the news. In Grenfell, the news is ‘it’s the cladding’ and for HS2, ‘it’s the cost’. The complexities and what it tells us about how the country is run never get picked up.” In pursuit of the former, she has spoken to (and was “surprised by the frankness” of) ev…

293AH0A8W-copy-9ba8635-e1752072644417.jpg
width: 1482
height: 988

Radio 4’s Derailed will explore “emotionally devastating” impact of HS2 railway project
type: item
date: 2025-07-07T23:01:07.000Z
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: Current Affairs
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: Journalist Kate Lamble says the HS2 farrago is as much about the nuances of British democracy as it is about our ability to deliver big engineering projects.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “You get this sharp intake of breath when you approach people about HS2,” says Kate Lamble, the presenter of a new Radio 4 series, Derailed: the Story of HS2. “They’re either people who have been personally affected and it’s been dominating their lives for over a decade, or it’s politicians for whom it was all important for a very brief period a long time ago. For many it’s been emotionally devastating.” Political instability and ephemeral ministers are, no surprise, key factors in the series. As it stands today, when “High Speed 2” is completed – at a date yet to be set – it will be Britain’s second purpose-built, high-speed railway after the London link to the Channel Tunnel (aka HS1) and will run between Birmingham and London. The original idea, conceived in 2009 under Gordon Brown, was to extend HS2 to Manchester and Leeds but this has since been cancelled. “Andrew Stephenson, the only dedicated HS2 minister who had been brought in by Boris Johnson at the Ministry of Transport in 2020, was in a factory looking at rolling stock when Boris called to inform him that he’d lost the leadership and said, ‘I’m out, you’re out, we’re all out’,” explains Lamble. This change of prime minister brought a big change in approach. Johnson was determined the project would succeed and had said, “The Treasury must not prevail in terms of HS2,” but former chancellor Rishi Sunak took a view that the cost should not outweigh the benefit and curtailed the line accordingly. “As with Grenfell Tower,” says Lamble, who won an Aria award for her in-depth coverage of that Inquiry, “it’s a long, involved story that hasn’t really translated in the news. In Grenfell, the news is ‘it’s the cladding’ and for HS2, ‘it’s the cost’. The complexities and what it tells us about how the country is run never get picked up.” In pursuit of the former, she has spoken to (and was “surprised by the frankness” of) everyone from Boris Johnson and the man wh…

GettyImages-1200167931-edba42c.jpg
width: 2749
height: 1844

Feats of Daring
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: From Spitting Image to Dead Ringers, the late Bill Dare’s instinct for comedy will inspire those he helped on the road to success
encoded: Add Bill Dare: Comedy Alchemist to your collections. In January this year, a few weeks before 64-year-old comedy producer Bill Dare died in a road accident, I interviewed the actor Steven Mangan about his starring role in the forthcoming Radio 4 show, The Island. The conceit was that certain celebrities who had appeared on Desert Island Discs subsequently ended up on the eponymous desert island with only each other and their luxury items (usually a coffee machine) for company. “An email came to my agent [from Bill Dare],” Mangan explained. “I’d never met Bill but obviously I know the name because it’s said in that Tom Baker voice at the end of Dead Ringers. I don’t think we had any scripts at that point but it was a very funny, clever idea and I thought if Bill Dare is involved, it sounds good.” “I’m not surprised,” nods Jon Culshaw, the man behind the Tom Baker-voiced credit for the man who created the beloved Dead Ringers comedy impressions show. “Once you heard that name you wouldn’t hesitate. He would command that kind of trust and confidence.” Culshaw has been synonymous with Dead Ringers since Dare asked him to appear in the pilot show in 2000 but the two had known each other long before. “I was a DJ at Viking Radio and interviewed Lenny Henry in about 1989, we hit it off doing different voices and he said, ‘You should send the tape to Spitting Image.’ So I did. Bill Dare was the one who received it and he said, ‘Yes, we could probably do something with you here.’” Dare was just about to leave the Emmy-Award winning satirical puppet TV show but not before the producer had given Culshaw the break he still acknowledges today as “making my whole career work”. At Broadcasting House a decade later, young comedy writer Jon Holmes (The Skewer) had just landed a job with the BBC and was sitting in a basement waiting to be told what to do. “A head appeared round the door and this weird guy just said, ‘Are you the new writer? We’re doing a Spitting Image-type show for t…

24-Dead-Ringersphoto-by-steve-ullathorne-copy-2-b3d022d-e1748616060846.jpg
width: 1535
height: 1025

Animal magic
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Landmine-detecting rats and drug-sniffing bees are just some of the creatures performing new niche jobs
encoded: The Animal Employment Agency is on Radio 4 at 3.30pm on Wednesday. Add it to your collection now “I think pandas are overrated,” says Simon Watt, author, comedian, evolutionary biologist and the man behind the Ugly Animal Preservation Society. “And I can say what I want because people who care about the panda are already on my team – they care [about conservation] and want to make a difference.” Pandas only cropped up because we were discussing the collective nouns for animals (for pandas it’s an “embarrassment”). A “business” of ferrets features in Radio 4’s The Animal Employment Agency, in which Watt highlights certain niche jobs where only an animal will do. “Despite the technology, AI and robotics available today,” he says, “animals are still smashing it.” Animals like Ronin, an African giant pouched rat, who was recognised by The Guinness Book of World Records last month after uncovering 109 landmines in Cambodia since 2021. Ronin was trained by Apopo, the same non-profit organisation in Tanzania as Jones, the HeroRat (as they’re known) encountered by Watt while recording the documentary. “Their sense of smell, trainability and extraordinary problem-solving intelligence, plus their size and ability to walk on landmines without triggering them, means they can significantly speed up operations,” he says. “Ethically, they are following their natural instincts, and they’re rewarded in both an emotional sense and with food as they build a relationship with their trainer.” HeroRats are also more efficient than humans and can check an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes whereas a person with a metal detector might take four days. Ferrets, too, are “way better than humans or machines in their field of expertise”. Which is? “They go into walls and find a way out,” says Watt. “They can be sent down a pipe and, wearing little telemetry trackers, discover a blockage that means you don’t have to rip up 100m of the central business district.” The National Ferret Sc…

202HEK2YD-e26065e-e1746542358528.jpg
width: 4260
height: 2843

Sunny side up
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Rachel Burden is fed up with the cynicism of news and looking for hope
encoded: Café Hope is on Radio 4 on Monday at 9.45am. Add it to your watchlist now April fools’ day is cancelled this year because no made-up prank could match [what’s] going on in the world right now.” You probably saw the meme last month and, rather than laugh, just silently acknowledged the sad truth at the heart of it. Conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East, the re-election of a man to the top job in the White House that comedian John Mulaney famously compared to a horse being allowed into a hospital, followed shortly by $1 trillion wiped off the stock market amid a seemingly random tariff war certainly make the world look like an unfunny joke. And these are just some of the events Rachel Burden could be talking about when she says, “Anyone who works in news media these days, whether that’s radio, digital or TV, is aware that there’s only so much that an audience can take.” In a fine case of nominative determinism, the Radio 5 Live weekday breakfast show presenter has frequently found herself breaking bad news to the nation as it has woken up over the last 14 years. She feels the despair. “People are turning off the news because it’s overwhelming. They feel they’ve no agency and are curating their own universe in terms of the media they consume.” For all the reasons above, that may well now include Café Hope, a Radio 4 show she has also been hosting since last year. In keeping with a slew of recent books such as Utopia for Realists and Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World – and Why Things Are Better than You Think and other initiatives like The Uplift on the CBS News app, Radio 4 “wanted to do something around finding a bit of hope and optimism in a very dark world,” explains Burden. “I jumped at the chance to be involved because it’s just so different to what I do every day.” Although she is careful to stress that, alongside the rolling news, her 5 Live show also tries to make “the audience smile or give them opportunities to feel hopeful”, the format f…

DSC3394-copy-d0df03c-e1744980051103.jpg
width: 1400
height: 932

Café Hope host Rachel Burden: 'Bad news drives clicks – but people still want uplifting stories too'
type: item
date: 2025-04-22T10:11:27.000Z
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: audio
subject: Radio
subject: BBC Radio 4
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The BBC Radio 4 show is a virtual coffee shop, where guests pop in for a brew and a chat to tell us what they're doing to make the world a better place.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "April Fools' Day is cancelled this year because no made-up prank could match [what's] going on in the world right now." You probably saw the meme last month and, rather than laugh, just silently acknowledged the sad truth at the heart of it. Conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East, the re-election of a man to the top job in the White House that comedian John Mulaney famously compared to a horse being allowed into a hospital, followed shortly by $1 trillion wiped off the stock market amid a seemingly random tariff war certainly make the world look like an unfunny joke. And these are just some of the events Rachel Burden could be talking about when she says, "Anyone who works in news media these days, whether that’s radio, digital or TV, is aware that there's only so much that an audience can take." In a fine case of nominative determinism, the Radio 5 Live weekday breakfast show presenter has frequently found herself breaking bad news to the nation as it has woken up over the last 14 years. She feels the despair. "People are turning off the news because it's overwhelming. They feel they’ve no agency and are curating their own universe in terms of the media they consume." For all the reasons above, that may well now include Café Hope, a Radio 4 show she has also been hosting since last year. In keeping with a slew of recent books such as Utopia for Realists and Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong about the World – and Why Things Are Better than You Think and other initiatives like The Uplift on the CBS News app, Radio 4 "wanted to do something around finding a bit of hope and optimism in a very dark world", explains Burden. "I jumped at the chance to be involved because it’s just so different to what I do every day." Although she is careful to stress that, alongside the rolling news, her 5 Live show also tries to make “the audience smile or give them opportunities to feel hopeful”, the format for Café Hope revolve…

rachel-burden-bbc-radio-5-live-1fed427.jpg
width: 2024
height: 1349

Pass the conch
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Imagine a world where Desert Island Discs castaways are marooned for real — Stephen Mangan is about to join them
encoded: The Island is on Radio 4 on Monday 17 February at 2.45pm. Stephen Mangan's Desert Island Discs interview is available on BBC Sounds. Add it to your collection now There’s a naughty rumour circulating about Stephen Mangan. It was probably started by a contemporary envious of the actor’s ubiquity – from The Split and Portrait Artist of the Year on TV to his own show on Classic FM and more voiceover work than seems feasible. Now he’s performed a takeover on Radio 4 with an appearance on Desert Island Discs and the lead in a related comedy series – The Island – within a week of each other. The gossip is that he only agreed to do the latter once a prestigious appearance had been secured on the former. “That’s hilarious if that’s walking around,” he laughs. “And no [that didn’t happen]. I’m not that clever. “They came in about the same time a year ago,” he says. “And I was delighted to be considered for both.” As the scheduling has played out, the sitcom will come after he talks to Lauren Laverne on 9 February. “There are only two things that I’ve been asked to do that have made me go, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s pretty fantastic.’ One was View from the Boundary on Test Match Special and the other one is Desert Island Discs. “I chose my eight records and if I don’t come out looking like the hippest cat in the business, I don’t care. I’m 56 and this happens to be the music that relates best to my life.” Protocol forbids full disclosure, but Mangan’s line-up includes Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees (used in his cult TV comedy Green Wing) and I Recall a Gypsy Woman by Don Williams. Of the latter, he explains: “To me, this is being driven through the Irish countryside after I’d finished serving pop and crisps to 1,500 very drunk Irish people in my Uncle Eamon’s dance hall – dancing, that hint of sex, violence, all very thrilling – and everybody singing along.” The format of the show lends itself to such revelatory biographical detail and Mangan remembers hearing Johnny Vegas on his…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/02/8The-IslandBrandImage1920x1080-copy-a5469b2-e1738943618955.jpg
width: 2595
height: 1730

'There's always unfinished business'
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Tony Parsons has seven Max Wolfe books under his belt, and says a TV version with Aidan Turner is on the cards
encoded: To order Murder for Busy People by Tony Parsons (Century, £20) for £18 including p&p, click here. You can tell when you walk into a publishing house exactly where your stock is and how well you’re selling,” says Tony Parsons, a “hip, young gunslinger” at the NME in the 1970s, author of 2001’s bestselling Man and Boy and, since 2014, the Max Wolfe detective novels. “If you’re doing well, girls you’ve never met say, ‘Hi, how’s it going? Love the new book.’ When your stock starts falling, guys you know don’t catch your eye because you’re on the way down… but it ebbs and flows.” Right now, Parsons’s stock is high: the seventh book featuring DC Max Wolfe, Murder for Busy People, is in bookshops and Aidan Turner is in talks to play the tough but compassionate London detective. But the 71-year-old author is playing it cool. “You know how it is. People want to do it and it doesn’t happen for whatever reason. We’re looking at a six-part series, they cost a few million each, and you come to that moment when even if it looks fantastic, someone’s still got to make that major investment.” Perhaps he’s still scarred by the Man and Boy experience. “We sold the TV rights to the BBC and the film rights to Harvey Weinstein, which you’re not allowed to boast about these days but was a big deal back then. The BBC took a book that was loved and turned it into something that was loved by nobody and I’d have preferred it not to have been made. Weinstein loved the book but didn’t make the film. Sometimes something not being made isn’t the worst outcome. “With the Max Wolfe series, [the people trying to put the adaptation deal together] are talking to me and I’m involved but, as Nick Hornby said, you sell them the right to do what they like with your book, their own vision, and I’m not writing it. I’ve always got this thing: if you’re smart, you’d get me to write it. I always believe that.” Peculiarly, it was this insistence that helped give birth to Max Wolfe in a roundabout fashion. “[Dir…

Tony-Parsons-Author-Photo-billwaters-TP-0171-af381ca.jpg
width: 2129
height: 1419

Spin, bias and sound bites
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Helen Lewis and Armando Iannucci are putting the language of politics under the spotlight
encoded: Strong Message Here is on Radio 4 on Thursdays at 9.45am. Add it to your collection. If you can pinpoint the inspiration behind the name of Radio 4’s Strong Message Here, then this is undoubtedly the show for you. It is, of course, the moment at the 2015 Labour Party Conference when Jeremy Corbyn accidentally read out an autocue prompt instructing him to be extra-emphatic. “It could happen to any of us,” smiles Helen Lewis, political journalist, broadcaster and SMH co-host. “It wasn’t too much of an obvious cliché to use as a name for the show and it sums up what we’ll be talking about, which is the idea that people don’t always say the things that they’re supposed to.” The other component part of “We” is Armando Iannucci – the man behind, among many other things, award-winning political satires Veep and The Thick of It. “Strong Message Here was Armando’s idea,” Lewis explains. “He comes at political language from writing comedy about it and I come at political language from trying to dissect it, but we share a fascination with how you can lie and flatter with language and how it is used [by politicians] to manipulate. My hope is that, as well as being an entertaining listen, the show will encourage people to think about something in a new way.” Lewis is talking to Radio Times from Pennsylvania, where she’s on US election duty, with a front-row seat at the rallies of Donald Trump – which are perhaps the most astonishing verbal pyrotechnic displays in recent political history. “The funny thing is that his speeches weave all over the place but in the moment you always know what he’s saying... it’s like a magic-eye painting, in that bits of it don’t really make sense but you step back and you can see the shark, you can see Hannibal Lecter,” to name just two of his recent off-script non sequiturs. “We might talk about that and ‘the enemy within’, a terrifying phrase he has just started using that recalls McCarthyism and [political] witch hunts.” Strong Message Here will…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2024/10/45GettyImages-2178028988-4313728-e1730309152736.jpg
width: 4564
height: 3042

Words to the wise
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: English is constantly evolving — which is just the way Phil Wang and Susie Dent like it
encoded: Unspeakable is on Radio 4 on Thursday at 6.30pm. Add it to your collection. Did you know that Stephen Fry is officially credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with coining the term “luvvy” in the late 1980s? It refers to a type of actor much like himself, but it was “a linguistic gap” that needed a word to fill it and, inadvertently, he provided it in print. Unspeakable is the Radio 4 show that allows panellists to dream up new words or raid other languages for universal, shared concepts and experiences that have up till now lacked an English expression. The hosts, comedian Phil Wang and lexicographer and RT’s Countdown wordsmith Susie Dent, tell us all about it and reveal some new contenders for inclusion in the OED. How did they sell the idea of Unspeakable to you both? SUSIE DENT When it came to me it was already this enticing package of a radio show about language… and Phil Wang was involved. So I said, “I’d love to do it.” PHIL WANG Well, to me they said, “We’ve got this show about words and Susie Dent’s involved…” Not really. They said, “We’ve got a format idea for a show about words and made-up words.” And because my persona is, I guess, nerdy, for want of a better term… SD [Raises hand] PW OK, Susie is also nerdy but she carries it with a glamour that I don’t have. I think I’m just nerdy. SD Can I just throw in that “grammar” and “glamour” were once exactly the same word? “Glamour” was the magical learning that was part of “grammar”, which meant all knowledge. And then they needed something else for the sparkly bit, so it went off in a different direction. So you can be grammarous, I reckon. PW This is exactly the content you can expect from Susie. When was the last time someone used a word in conversation and you didn’t know what it meant? SD It happens more often than you might think, but I enjoy it because it sends me to the dictionary, which is the place I am happiest. As Phil will tell you, I have the OED on my phone. PW Usually it’s new slang that c…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2024/10/Unspeakableseries-imageunbranded1920x108067-c97ddf6-e1730307605973.jpg
width: 1920
height: 1081

Daisy May Cooper: 'I received a paranormal visit from late This Country co-star'
type: item
date: 2024-10-15T10:30:53.000Z
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: Books
subject: BBC
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "If anybody was going to come back and let me know there was something after death, it would be him."
encoded: "There was this banging at the bedroom door," says Daisy May Cooper, BAFTA-winning actor, screenwriter, star of This Country and now author. "It was a month ago. Before that the duvet had lifted off the bed. And this knocking at the door wasn’t a normal kind – there was a rhythm and me and my partner just looked at each other." We are talking about paranormal experiences. Chiefly because that’s what Cooper’s book, Hexy Bitch: Tales from My Life, the Afterlife and Beyond, is all about and contains so many of them. But we’re also discussing the untimely death of her friend, 33-year-old This Country co-star Michael Sleggs ("Slugs" in the show). "I’m sure it was him," she says. "If anybody was going to come back and let me know there was something after death, it would be him. I mean, even the way he went." He claimed to have been visited by an angel in his hospital bed who promised him that in seven days he would have a new body by midnight – he died at 11:59pm seven days later. "I made him promise he would come back, and he would definitely do it because he knows it would freak me out and he’d find that hilarious." The funny side of grief and dealing with loss has been insufficiently covered in celeb memoirs in recent years. But in Cooper’s case it’s perhaps a natural expression of the fascination she has felt for the unexplained since she was four years old and her mother’s sister died in a car crash. She writes in the book: "When Auntie Alison died, Granny seemed to cross over into another realm. Mum did too… It was this family tragedy that set Mum and Granny on a never-ending quest to find Alison." And they dragged Daisy with them – to spiritualist church services, the backs of pubs, or sometimes a visit-at-home for an audience with freeloading clairvoyants. "They were basically trading on people’s grief," she says now. "It was so obvious to me at the time that they were taking people for a ride, but I suppose it offered hope where there was none." There’s a lot of…

daisy-may-cooper-b2ea31d.jpg
width: 1633
height: 1089

You have to laugh
type: item
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Matt Chorley brings his light touch reporting on politics to the BBC
encoded: Matt Chorley's weekday show on 5 Live begins on Monday. Add it your collection. Politics is a funny old business, so who better to host 5 Live’s new afternoon politics show than a comedian? Matt Chorley, columnist, author, Have I Got News for You regular and, for four years, a presenter on Times Radio, is the man in question. Three sold-out political comedy tours in recent years confirm the 42-year-old’s stand-up credentials. “There is a sort of precedent,” he notes. “John Sergeant [former BBC chief political correspondent] was in a sketch show on TV with Alan Bennett before journalism and had a very similar path to me, though slightly more successful on the comedy side.” A similar-ish path. Sergeant went from private school to Oxford, whereas Chorley, by his own account, “Grew up on the Somerset Levels, went to a state comp, did A-levels in the bright lights of Taunton, and was all set to go to university when I got paid work experience on the local paper over the summer. I thought, ‘If I go to university, in three years’ time, I’ll be right back here wanting exactly this’, so I didn’t go. And that’s quite unusual in the world of national journalism.” After the Taunton Times he moved to London in 2004 and a year later got a job in the House of Commons press gallery with the national news agency PA. He has been in or around Westminster ever since, working for media organisations including the Independent on Sunday and The Times. “I’ve had something of a portfolio career. But at my core I’m still a journalist. I want to tell stories and I want people to learn about a world that is really interesting – one way of doing that is using humour. “Watching Rishi Sunak calling an election standing in the rain without pointing out that he might have been happier with an umbrella would be just odd. Being able to laugh at the absurdity of the world along with listeners, rather than people thinking that politics is boring and distant, is a way of hooking people into thinking, ‘T…

36Matt-Chorley-copy-2-600476e-e1725029367648.jpg
width: 6728
height: 4485

Ralf Little on "slightly eerie" Death in Paradise Christmas special
type: item
date: 2022-12-26T19:00:48.000Z
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: Drama
subject: TV
description: The DI Parker star chats to Radio Times magazine about the festive episode and the upcoming season.
encoded: Ralf Little will never forget the call from his agent. "My other half and I had pulled up in a car park on the west coast of Ireland. I was standing in the rain when I was told they wanted me to be the new detective in Death in Paradise. I was banging on the windscreen, trying not to shout it out loud, waving at my girlfriend inside the car, 'I got it, I got it!' You could say I was really delighted." Then he phoned his mum. "She said, 'I’m so pleased, I'm really proud of you.' She then called back two minutes later and warned me not to ruin it." She had no need to worry. With a Christmas special on Boxing Day and Little’s third series beginning on 6th January, his character DI Neville Parker is now the longest-serving expat British cop to be trapped on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie. "That doesn’t particularly mean anything," he says, humbly. "It’s just nice to have been accepted by the public in a role that means such a lot to people." The Christmas special was shot in Guadeloupe at the end of May. "It’s not an unusual thing in the industry to have to don your Christmas jumpers and party hats at the wrong time of the year," Little, 42, reflects. "But there’s always something psychologically heartbreaking about picking up one of the presents the props department have left under the tree and realising it’s empty. And the beautiful bright sunshine takes a little bit of getting used to. Christmas is dark nights, chillier weather and cosy houses." And sprouts, if DI Parker has anything to do with it ("I’m with him on that," says Little, "and my mum’s gravy is a must"), but that is merely an intriguing subplot. "The Christmas episode is like a slightly eerie ghost story in a vaguely Dickensian style. There are some spooky goings-on the gang has to try to explain but Neville, of course, is a cynic. It’s got that lovely, let’s-huddle-on-the-sofa vibe, and Les Dennis is magnificent as the psychic. I think people will love it." The new series, he promises, wi…

365275-672612c.jpg
width: 4284
height: 2856

Inside Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup
type: item
date: 2022-11-15T16:03:57.000Z
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: Football
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: World Cup 2022
description: The world holds its breath as Qatar prepares to host the FIFA World Cup – against all the odds.
encoded: There were audible gasps when Qatar won the bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup – and not just in the room where it was announced. The world rushed to judgement with accusations of corruption and a desire to point out that the small Gulf state had no football heritage. Beyond that, the general consensus was that it would not even be possible in a country where temperatures can hit 50°C in the summer. “A football will not be kicked in Qatar,” predicted astonished talkSPORT presenter Danny Kelly at the time. It was hard to disagree. 12 years later, 20 storey images of the greatest players in the world – Lionel Messi, Gareth Bale, Sadio Mane and Harry Kane among them – adorn the sides of skyscrapers in the opulent forest of statement architecture next to the Persian Gulf and flags of all 32 represented nations flutter at the side of the street and congregate in select locations in the city, along the 7km long Corniche and in several ‘FanFest’ sites like the main one at Al Biddah park. The official mascot (‘La’eeb’) and the elongated Arabic script viewers at home are about to become very familiar with are everywhere from the airport arrivals hall to the pin badges of the hotel staff. As a branding exercise alone, it is remarkable. For more World Cup features check out: World Cup 2022 kits ranked | World Cup 2022 TV schedule | World Cup 2022 fixtures | Best players in the world 2022 Two things have made this tournament possible: It was moved to the winter and revolutionary cooling technology was developed to regulate the temperature inside the new and bespoke stadia at a comfortable 23-35°C for both players and spectators. The construction of these stadia, however, has made headlines for all the wrong reasons and highlighted the appalling treatment of migrant workers in the country. FIFA and the Qatari authorities remain keen to move the story along but the grievances of unpaid, underpaid and injured workers and the relatives of those who lost their lives remain. It woul…

Qatar-World-Cup-404ba7d.jpg
width: 4197
height: 2798

Fighting back: How DIY SOS helped Grenfell's community reclaim its world-class boxing heritage
type: item
date: 2018-09-05T09:53:42.000Z
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: Current Affairs
subject: Documentaries
subject: News
subject: TV
description: After the Grenfell fire, Nick Knowles and DIY SOS took on their greatest challenge to date...
encoded: As he had done many times in the previous 18 years, Mick Delaney locked up the boxing gym on the second floor of Grenfell Tower at about 9.30pm on Tuesday 13 June, 2017. The last of the seniors had finished training and as he cast his eyes over the modern, two-ring gym, brand new heavy bags hanging in front of spotless mirrors and framed pictures of Dale Youth Amateur Boxing Club old boys James DeGale and George Groves – both now super-middleweight world champions – he knew the long wait for the council-led refurbishment had been worth it. Three-and-a-half hours later the 24-storey tower block in North Kensington, London, was on fire. It would burn for the next 60 hours, claiming the lives of 72 people. Delaney heard about it at 5.30am. Meet Grenfell Tower’s original architect Channel 4 combines virtual reality with emotional testimony to recreate Grenfell before the fire “One of the coaches who works with me was on his way to work and he called and said, ‘Get up and put your TV on, you will never believe it, there are flames coming out of all the windows in Grenfell.’” Gary McGuinness, another coach at Dale Youth ABC, had already been outside for three hours watching the blaze. “I just couldn’t take it all in,” he says now. “It was so close. My garden was full of ash.” View oEmbed on the source website David “Little Dave” Price, just nine years old at the time, was woken by his father in a nearby tower block to be told that he was not going to the boxing club any time soon. “I said, ‘Why, Dad? What have I done?’, he remembers now. “I put the radio on and went out on to my balcony and saw all the smoke. My friend Luana [Gomes] was in there with her family, we were boxing buddies.” Luana was rescued, placed in an induced coma and treated for cyanide poisoning. She has happily recovered, but Tony Disson, a 65-year-old supporter and helper at the gym, died in the fire. The community has begun to rebuild, and replacing the gym – temporarily reconvened in a disused multi…

16337863-low res-diy-sos-grenfell-dc57ce5.jpg
width: 2000
height: 1334

"Jo was the only presenter I could imagine working with" – Simon Mayo and Jo Whiley prepare to co-present after Radio 2 shake up
type: item
date: 2018-05-14T12:55:51.000Z
creator: Bill Borrows
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: audio
description: Simon Mayo and Jo Whiley, friends since the 90s and now co-presenters on BBC Radio 2, discuss their new drivetime show
encoded: "Do ladybirds milk aphids?!” asks Jo Whiley, who is clearly as bemused as RT as we sit and consider the question. “It turns out that ladybirds eat aphids, but ants milk aphids,” says Simon Mayo, without missing a beat. The two venerable presenters are wedged next to each other in a cramped office belonging to the head of Radio 2 on the third floor of Wogan House. “It’s one of the weirdest things ever,” Mayo continues. Whiley looks at him, then at Radio Times, then back at Mayo again. “It was a Homework question on yesterday’s show,” he offers by way of an explanation. “Ladybirds will eat aphids but ants look after them.” This is precisely the kind of entertaining, useless information that keeps Mayo’s show tripping along for two hours every weekday evening and has helped turn it into the most popular drivetime show on radio, with almost six million listeners. Jo Whiley may not have been among them the day before, but she would have been preparing for her own Radio 2 show, which goes out at 8pm Mondays to Thursdays. But from this Monday they are teaming up to co-present the new Jo Whiley and Simon Mayo show from 5pm to 8pm. It’s one of a number of Radio 2 schedule changes this week, with a new show for Sara Cox, Cerys Matthews taking over The Blues Show, and a new programme hosted by OJ Borg. Jo Whiley to become first woman to host Radio 2 drivetime for 20 years The 50 best BBC radio broadcasters of all time RadioTimes.com newsletter: get the latest TV and entertainment news direct to your inbox View oEmbed on the source website “It was a deal-breaker,” she teases. “If I’ve got to work with him I said we would have to talk about gardening.” The former Radio 1 DJ is now well known for her love of gardening. “Yes, we’re going to do a long gardening feature,” deadpans Mayo. “Every Thursday is going to be devoted to gardening tips – like Gardeners’ Question Time but for two hours.” He is joking, but as we speak, three weeks before their first show goes on air, the format…

15837164-high res-radio-2-presenters-2018-90585ed.jpg
width: 2856
height: 4284