Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2026-04-20T16:17:07.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Jo Nesbø reveals his 5 must-visit locations for fans of Detective Harry Hole
items: Michael Portillo reveals two near-death experiences he encountered in Japan – and the most futuristic thing he found
items: Ben Fogle: "I'm reconciled to the fact I might not be returning to China any time soon"
items: Emma Chapman: "If intelligent life has evolved and wants to send us a message, they'll develop a radio telescope to do that"
items: 'Harry and I are soulmates'
items: Legendary author Jo Nesbø talks running Detective Hole show, his own brushes with the law, and why Harry Hole is his soulmate
items: Alexander Armstrong reveals his most memorable moments from his trip to India – including a "must-do" cremation
items: I quit my job of 25 years to write a book – I felt frozen with fear
items: First Dates favourite Fred Sirieix reveals which country he thinks makes the best butter in the world
items: Lorraine Kelly reveals why you won't see her naked in a sauna for Norwegian Odyssey: "Nobody wanted to see that from me"
items: The Young Ones' Nigel Planer says Adrian Edmondson "regrets" falling out with late Rik Mayall before death
items: 'You have to move forward'
items: Inside Tom Read Wilson's Grand Tour as Celebs Go Dating star continues his magnificent journey
items: Si King reaffirms end of The Hairy Bikers as he grieves late Dave Myers: "There's no Hairy Bikers without my mate"
items: Michael Rosen: "This may sound extraordinary, but I'm not traumatised by the death of my son"
items: Blackadder's Ben Elton reveals how Stephen Fry responded to his "few-holds-barred" portrayal in new memoir
items: Bob Geldof talks always being bored of Band Aid, the end of rock 'n' roll and Taylor Swift
items: Medieval Prince Harry "would have killed" William, imagines Young James Bond author – as he compares King Charles to a murdered monarch
items: Exploring Zambia, the star of BBC One's Kingdom
items: Sally Magnusson dishes on King Charles III reporting the weather – and why she doesn't miss Reporting Scotland following 27-year run
items: Michael Palin reveals how a Monty Python sketch saved him from being thrown in a Venezuelan jail
items: As seen on Apple TV's The Last Frontier: Discover Alaska the luxurious way
items: Jane Goodall: 'We must all do our bit to make the world a better place'
items: Dame Jane Goodall: 'We must all do our bit to make the world a better place'
items: Rob Brydon reveals why he initially turned down new BBC series – and what changed his mind
items: Gavin & Stacey icon Joanna Page dishes on her new memoir Lush! - and why she wrote it in the car at 5am
items: Adam Kay argues the NHS is the UK’s greatest institution but “one of the worst employers”
items: Whitstable Pearl offers a taste of the Kent coast – and the real star is the location
items: Rhys James reveals why a US version of Mock the Week is probably not happening
items: 'Every character is a part of me, even the nutters'

Jo Nesbø reveals his 5 must-visit locations for fans of Detective Harry Hole
type: item
date: 2026-04-20T16:00:28.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Fans of the fictional detective are keen to explore his Oslo stomping ground, says author Jo Nesbø.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “It’s unreal. I just pretend it’s not happening,” says Jo Nesbø, creator of Netflix’s Detective Hole series and the 60-million-selling books that came before it. But is he talking about his hero’s troubled personal life? The occult mystery at the heart of the show’s plot? No, he means the significant number of tourists pottering around Oslo looking for spots featured in the book or series. The city’s tourist board has a whole microsite devoted to helping holidaymakers find Harry’s haunts (visitoslo.com/en/articles/harry-hole) – but here are a few of Nesbø’s own highlights. Harry’s house Sofies gate 5 When looking for a locale for his hero, Nesbø admits: “I made things easy for myself by writing about places close to where I lived.” The author still has a place in Bislett, one of Oslo’s oldest neighbourhoods, though he’d rather you focused on Hole’s address than his own. “I’ve been in James Joyce’s house in Dublin, and it didn’t give me any insight into his writing, and it didn’t clear up [Joyce’s notoriously difficult epic] Finnegans Wake.” Instead, locate Harry’s place at Sofies gate 5 – you’ll find some genius has assigned a buzzer to HARRY HOLE on the flats’ entry phone system. Watering Hole Restaurant Schrøder To say Schrøder’s (Waldemar Thranes gate 8; restaurant-schrøder.no) is Harry’s regular hang-out is a decorous understatement. The joint features in every single book and takes a starring role in the TV series, too. You may or may not understand Hole’s devotion once you’ve been here – it’s a no-frills bar/restaurant where neither the decor nor menu seems to have changed much since it opened in 1956 – but you’ll see why it suits the dissolute detective: drinks are cheap and breakfast is served between noon and 3pm. Its sole concession to its newfound fame is a small plaque above one random table that says plainly, “This is the table Harry Hole prefers to sit at.” Where does Nesbø go? “There are bars near t…

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Michael Portillo reveals two near-death experiences he encountered in Japan – and the most futuristic thing he found
type: item
date: 2026-04-13T16:01:17.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Hot sand baths, risky sushi, robot carers... Japan delivered no end of thrills and surprises for the railway enthusiast.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. So, Michael, you went to Japan and they buried you? Up to my neck in black sand, yes. Hot springs are a big thing out there because of all the volcanic activity, and I went to one on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands, where the subterranean waters heat the sand, and they bury you in it. It’s supposed to be good for all sorts of bits for you – people swear by it for the circulation, digestion and so on. It’s really no odder than going to a sauna. Except in a sauna you’re not buried. What if they forget to exhume you? It’s doubtful you could get yourself out, but there are people on hand to help. They stuck a parasol on my head to protect me from the sun – although it then poured with rain, and it was one of those pretty paper ones so not terribly effective at keeping me dry. I won’t be hurrying to do the whole thing again, though I did love Kyushu. Not far from Ibusuki, where they buried me, is a very beautiful volcano called Sakurajima, which translates as “Cherry Blossom Island”. It’s perfectly volcano-shaped, and it’s one of Japan’s most active, so everyone in the area is drilled on what to do if it erupts. We saw all these tiny tots going to school in their pink hard hats and carrying survival cases. You survived another near-death experience with a dinner, didn’t you? Yes, there was the pufferfish. This is the Japanese delicacy that naturally contains a deadly neurotoxin with no known antidote, so chefs have to have something like 20 years of training before they’re licensed to prepare it. I tried it at Shimonoseki, on the main island, Honshu, and you have this real feeling of playing Russian – or Japanese – Roulette. What does it taste like? I’m guessing... fish? It tasted extremely like fish. It was quite pleasant – neither the best nor the worst fish I’ve ever had, though possibly the most exciting, given that I was dicing with death. It was certainly better than the fried octopus balls …

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Ben Fogle: "I'm reconciled to the fact I might not be returning to China any time soon"
type: item
date: 2026-03-30T16:00:58.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Whether he was fixing The Great Wall, fulfilling a film-studio dream or going wild, China took Ben Fogle’s breath away.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “I’m reconciled to the fact I might not be returning to China any time soon,” says Ben Fogle. He’s not being flippant: there’s a real possibility he will be banned from the People’s Republic after his new series about the country starts this week. “We had to think very carefully, because there are a number of things we filmed that the authorities there won’t be happy with,” he explains. “We did have a government-assigned observer with us, but they’d often disappear when the temptation of tea and cakes arose. So our documentary is a pretty accurate insight into our ‘lived experience’ out there. “But I would absolutely say to everyone, ‘Go to China’. It’s probably the most interesting travel journey I’ve done.” Here are his highlights. Jiankou The Great Wall “When I was told that I would be ‘fixing’ a part of the Wall, I thought it would be a typical TV moment of me holding a brick with 20 other people wearing white gloves, gently putting it down and then claiming to have been a part of the Wall-making team. I had no idea that, in China, when they say you’re doing something, you really do it. So I physically lifted and made the cement for dozens of bricks that were hundreds and hundreds of years old. That was really moving, but even just seeing the Wall at the main tourist spots near Beijing is incredible. “Nothing can prepare you for the scale, majesty, magnitude and emotions of the Great Wall as it soars over peaks and down gullies. It took my breath away.” Chengdu A Chinese medicine market “Traditional medicine is huge in China, and the markets themselves are vast. It’s like going to a FTSE 100 company: they’ve got massive boards showing the fluctuating prices of different ingredients, changing in real time, like gold and silver prices. They use a lot of animal parts, of which penises seem to be very common for healing human aliments that involve sexual organs. But we also went to a cockroach farm where they harv…

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Emma Chapman: "If intelligent life has evolved and wants to send us a message, they'll develop a radio telescope to do that"
type: item
date: 2026-03-23T17:00:49.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The signals that bring us radio and TV could also let us talk to extraterrestrial life, says Emma Chapman.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. When humans eventually make contact with aliens, we’ll be able talk to them about sitcoms. “There’s something called the I Love Lucy Radius,” explains author and astrophysicist Emma Chapman, referencing the long-running US comedy series of the 1950s. Thanks to its massive popularity, “its broadcast caused significant emissions of radio waves [used in early TVs as well as radios] into space. We were very loud to the universe at that point. And the I Love Lucy Radius is how far those radio waves have travelled in the 75 years since they were broadcast – which now encapsulates a few planets beyond our solar system. If there is life on those worlds, they’ll have seen I Love Lucy.” Chapman’s new book, Radio Universe, is full of fantastic little fact-blasts like that, but there’s something especially delicious about listening to them on Radio 4, where the work is this week’s Book of the Week, because the technology you’re utilising is the very same as that Chapman uses to listen in to the echoes of the Big Bang in her day job as a Royal Society research fellow at Nottingham University. “When you extend the antenna on your radio – or switch on your mobile phone, which also has miniaturised antennas in it – you’ll be receiving radio waves from big stations like London’s BT Tower,” she explains, “and that’s how The Archers arrives safely to you. Radio astronomy is just using a different size or shape of antenna, and pointing them upwards to receive waves from solar flares or space weather or pulses from a spinning pulsar star or matter actually swirling and falling into a black hole.” She’s not wrong about using a different size of antenna: if you’ve seen GoldenEye or Contact, you’ve seen Puerto Rico’s 1,000-foot Arecibo radio telescope. But just as impressive, apparently – and Chapman has worked at both – is the Square Kilometre Array Telescope currently being built in the Western Australian desert, which will consist of …

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'Harry and I are soulmates'
type: item
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: After almost 20 years and 13 novels, author Jo Nesbo is bringing flawed hero Harry Hole to life on TV
encoded: Add Jo Nesbo's Detective Hole to your watchlist Two counts of bank robbery and one of indecent exposure – it’s fair to say that Jo Nesbo has come closer to his subject than most crime authors. “I was arrested in Oslo,” says the writer behind 13 Harry Hole novels and now a blockbuster adaptation on Netflix. “The police car drove up on the pavement in front of me, the cops jumped out and it was, ‘Turn your back! Hands on the wall!’ There had been a bank robbery just a few blocks away, and I was wearing the same clothes as the suspect. Weirdly, the same thing happened to me in Brazil, too.” There was no mistaken identity in the indecent exposure case: “I was 18, I was drunk, I mooned a police car… I spent a few hours in jail.” But the remarkable thing about Nesbo’s criminal past is that it’s not even the most interesting thing in his backstory. As well as selling more than 60 million books, the 65-year-old Norwegian has been a professional footballer (striker for Molde FK), the lead singer in a successful band (Di Derre) and an elite-level rock climber (completing his first officially pro-grade ascent at the age of 59), and is now, with Jo Nesbo’s Detective Hole debuting this week, a show-runner. “That opportunity came quite late in life,” he shrugs, almost apologetically, “and I just wanted to be part of something big like that. If it had been a movie, I wouldn’t have got involved, but because it was a TV series I said yes.” When I ask him why the different responses, he says something about the source novel feeling “more like a 10-hour story than a two-hour one”, but I wonder if actually it might have something to do with his previous experience at the hands of Hollywood. The Snowman (also a Harry Hole mystery), starring Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson, hit cinemas in 2017 and received a frosty response from both critics and audiences. “I saw an early cut, so I knew approximately where it was headed,” sighs Nesbo, “and I knew that it probably wasn’t going to …

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Legendary author Jo Nesbø talks running Detective Hole show, his own brushes with the law, and why Harry Hole is his soulmate
type: item
date: 2026-03-16T17:00:28.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: After almost 20 years and 13 novels, author Jo Nesbø is bringing flawed hero Harry Hole to life on TV.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Two counts of bank robbery and one of indecent exposure – it’s fair to say that Jo Nesbø has come closer to his subject than most crime authors. “I was arrested in Oslo,” says the writer behind 13 Harry Hole novels and now a blockbuster adaptation on Netflix. “The police car drove up on the pavement in front of me, the cops jumped out and it was, ‘Turn your back! Hands on the wall!’ There had been a bank robbery just a few blocks away, and I was wearing the same clothes as the suspect. Weirdly, the same thing happened to me in Brazil, too.” There was no mistaken identity in the indecent exposure case: “I was 18, I was drunk, I mooned a police car… I spent a few hours in jail.” But the remarkable thing about Nesbø’s criminal past is that it’s not even the most interesting thing in his backstory. As well as selling more than 60 million books, the 65-year-old Norwegian has been a professional footballer (striker for Molde FK), the lead singer in a successful band (Di Derre) and an elite-level rock climber (completing his first officially pro-grade ascent at the age of 59), and is now, with Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole debuting this week, a show-runner. “That opportunity came quite late in life,” he shrugs, almost apologetically, “and I just wanted to be part of something big like that. If it had been a movie, I wouldn’t have got involved, but because it was a TV series I said yes.” When I ask him why the different responses, he says something about the source novel feeling “more like a 10-hour story than a two-hour one”, but I wonder if actually it might have something to do with his previous experience at the hands of Hollywood. The Snowman (also a Harry Hole mystery), starring Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson, hit cinemas in 2017 and received a frosty response from both critics and audiences. “I saw an early cut, so I knew approximately where it was headed,” sighs Nesbø, “and I knew that it probably wasn’t goin…

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Alexander Armstrong reveals his most memorable moments from his trip to India – including a "must-do" cremation
type: item
date: 2026-03-02T17:01:14.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Comment
subject: Magazine
description: From scary critters to spicy street food, Alexander Armstrong shares his unmissable highlights from his trip to India for Channel 5.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. There are, Alexander Armstrong reminds us in his Channel 5 travelogue, 1.4 billion people in India. And, he tells Radio Times, “I gave it a good shot at meeting them all.” Clearly, he’s a man who’s covered the ground. Here are his most memorable moments. Must-see: Tigers We saw all sorts of amazing creatures on this trip: elephants blocking our way on the roads, macaques who’ve learnt to steal mobile phones and only return them in exchange for a bag of crisps – and not any old packet, either; they want a proper grab bag. But the truly astonishing thing to glimpse is a tiger, which we saw at Bandipur reserve (bandipurtr.in). Their power, their muscles, their teeth, the way they pad… they’re beautiful but they’re also exciting. Even their “camouflage” is like flame: it’s like watching red-hot lava against the ice of Reykjavik. And these tigers aren’t cosseted. They’re finding their own food – and it’s not grab bags. Must-do: Cremation One of the experiences that will live with me for ever, scarred onto my retina, is going to the ghats [stepped embankments] in Delhi. I’m 55, and I’d never seen a dead body before – but then, on these steps beside the river, you can’t move for dead bodies, and they’re beautiful. They’re laid out in resplendent robes, with endless prayers and rituals enacted around them, then the pyre is built up, and liquids are poured on – some sacred, some that I think are actually an aid to burning, squeezed out of a tube like you’d get from the garage for your barbecue – and people stand around to watch. We were very sweetly invited to film one by the second or third cousin of the deceased, but then one of the dead person’s sons turned round and said, “What the hell are you doing? Go away!” so we had to quickly reverse out of that. Must-buy: Emeralds There’s a place called the Gem Palace in Jaipur that’s a must-visit even if jewels aren’t a must-buy for you (gempalace.com). It was a total joy being…

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I quit my job of 25 years to write a book – I felt frozen with fear
type: item
date: 2026-02-23T17:00:04.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: RT Book Club
description: Jennie Godfrey's new novel is out now.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Jennie Godfrey is the author other authors hate. “I think, being really honest, that some of them absolutely do,” she confirms. It’s not that she’s unpleasant or a bad writer (she’s very much neither); what’s put literary backs up is her success, and the apparent ease by which she came by it. Her first novel, 2024’s The List of Suspicious Things topped The Sunday Times charts, was one of the UK’s all-time bestselling debuts, sold 10,000 copies in its first week – and (can you hear those teeth grinding?) was the first thing she’d ever written. “I’ve had lots of people cast aspersions on my route to the bestsellers charts,” she sighs. “I wrote a SubStack post [about it], and I got accused of lying, of having connections in publishing, of secretly working for publishers, of being rich, of having a rich family…” It would all be quite depressing if it weren’t for the fact that, on the other hand, “there are a lot of people who’ve taken great hope from my story. Because when you do start writing, all you hear is how difficult it is, how you’ll never get an agent, you’ll never get a book deal… And particularly women of a certain age [Godfrey is 55], you’re told you’ve missed your chance. And I’m the opposite of all that.” Hers is certainly an inspiring backstory: after a 25-year career in corporate HR, she chucked in the job to pen a book – “before I’d started writing it or even had the idea for it. Which was like jumping off a cliff without a parachute.” The day job that Godfrey says she was “insane” to quit was a good grounding, though, it seems: “As an HR person, people tell you stuff. You get to know their secrets and what lies behind everyone’s façades.” Handy, because that’s very much the subject of her new novel, published earlier this month: “The Barbecue at No 9 is set in July 1985, and takes place over the 12 hours of the Live Aid concert. It’s the story of the residents of a new-build cul-de-sac, and how they …

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First Dates favourite Fred Sirieix reveals which country he thinks makes the best butter in the world
type: item
date: 2026-01-19T17:00:09.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Entertainment
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: On a cycling trip for his show Tour de Fred: Ireland – Part Deux, Fred Sirieix threw himself into activities – some more successfully than others.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Let’s start with the toughest challenge of your trip. You had to spend a whole afternoon at a museum devoted to butter production? Ha, it was actually very interesting. I’m a Frenchman, you know, so I love butter. The French think they make the best butter in the world, but the Irish stuff is incredible. In fact I did some blind taste-testing, and the winner was Kerrygold! It has this creaminess that comes from the cows and what they eat: everything is green in Ireland, so they eat a lot of grass, which makes Irish butter so rounded. The museum? Well, yes, it does have quite a lot wooden things, but it’s also about history and the people and how important butter was for the local economy [The Butter Museum, Cork; thebuttermuseum.com]. Plus I got to make butter for the first time in my life, churning the cream by hand by turning this thing that looks like a propeller. It’s great, because you can just eat it straight away after you’ve done that, but it takes a good bit of elbow grease – it’s hard work. Planning your next trip? Request a free travel brochure with Radio Times Travel Perhaps you’re not cut out to be a churner. Did you get on any better when you tried your hand at growing oysters? That’s pretty hard work, too! I went to an amazing oyster farm in Wexford, but the real story is that the farmer there, when he was a young man, worked for three years for no pay just to learn his trade. It’s a story of resilience and vision and values, and I told his kids: “Your dad is a superhero.” He sells his oysters to Gillardeau, which is one of the very top French companies – in fact Gillardeau is one of my favourite oysters: nice and meaty, with a beautiful taste. The farm isn’t much to look at – just a lot of mud at the seashore – but that’s the reality of farming. I probably couldn’t do it myself, but I love eating them. Did you show potential at anything you had a go at? I really tried! Even when I was doing a tradi…

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Lorraine Kelly reveals why you won't see her naked in a sauna for Norwegian Odyssey: "Nobody wanted to see that from me"
type: item
date: 2026-01-14T08:00:24.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Channel 4
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The TV star is making the most of what Norway has to offer in her new Channel 4 series.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “There are a lot of similarities with Scotland,” says Lorraine Kelly after visiting Norway for her new travelogue. The Glasgow-born presenter should know thanks to her background, and also because her Norwegian Odyssey for Channel 4 involved multiple trips, in both winter and summer, and her advice is unequivocal: “It’s expensive – I’d say that to anybody who’s thinking of going there – but my goodness me, it’s well worth it.” So what was the highlight of your trip, Lorraine? The Northern Lights were unbelievable. I’ve tried to see them before, in Sweden, Finland and Orkney, and never had any luck. In fact, when I was in Sweden, staying at the Ice Hotel, people were able to see them in Dundee but we saw nothing! So I was desperate to see them in Norway, but we only had a three-day window. Then suddenly we saw this wall of green with a sort of pink tinge. The whole sky was green, with this light going right back over our heads, like a kind of green rainbow. So famous people get a special performance, huh? Well, obviously, of course! But no, we were just incredibly lucky. Even Tom, our “aurora hunter” – that’s his actual job – said, “Wow, this is spectacular!”, so we knew we were seeing something special. Where were you? We were just out beyond Nordkapp, which is a cape at the very top of Norway. And we were on a Hurtigruten ship – one of those that you can cruise on for a holiday, but they’re also working vessels, which connect all the little towns along the fjords. They’re the best way to get around, because the coastline is so rugged and looks like animals have chewed bits off the edges. You’re right in the middle of things, too, and you see so much: we saw orcas, sea eagles, everything. You sailed into Hjørundfjord, too – which locals say is the most beautiful fjord in the world. Are they right? Oh, that was really something. The ship goes right in up this narrow fjord, and the captain then has to turn it around…

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The Young Ones' Nigel Planer says Adrian Edmondson "regrets" falling out with late Rik Mayall before death
type: item
date: 2026-01-12T17:00:45.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Nigel Planer discusses his role as Neil the hippy in The Young Ones and much more in his new memoir.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Even Nigel Planer’s own mum used to confuse him with Neil the hippy, the character he created for The Young Ones back in 1982. “She usually got my name right, at least,” he sighs, admitting that his friends sometimes don’t, “but she did think I was vegetarian, simply because he was.” He’s not the first actor, of course, to become indelibly conflated with a part he’s played. But with a career that’s also taken in TV shows from Blackadder to Blackeyes, West End musicals, writing poetry and plays and more than 100 episodes of The Magic Roundabout, it must annoy him, no? “Should I be like a lot of comedians, and go, ‘I don’t want to talk about that’? My colleague Adrian [Edmondson, who played punk Vyvyan in The Young Ones] has an attitude that’s done him a lot of good: saying, ‘That was two months of my life, 45 years ago. Why should I be talking about it now? I want to move forward.’ That works for him, and all power to him – but I can’t seem to get away from it. “When we’re going around together, he avoids people but I always end up chatting to them. Maybe it’s because I’m 6ft 3in, or because I’ve got a stupid face: he can just walk past people and they don’t notice, but I still get 'Neil, Neil, orange peel' [one of the show’s many memorable phrases] three times a day. "But why be mean to them? I just think about my favourite series, Dad’s Army, and the people in it: the actors might think, ‘I’ve been cornered now,’ but I love those characters. And if I can generate in other people just a quarter of what I feel about Ian Lavender – ‘Don’t tell him, Pike!’ – I can die happy.” Certainly Planer’s new memoir gives a satisfyingly significant chunk over to his most famous role (and takes its punning title, Young Once, from the show, too). But the multi-hyphenate has many more stories to tell: married three times, a grandfather at 29, with stints as bellringer, gravedigger and Top of the Pops performer on his CV, he descri…

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'You have to move forward'
type: item
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The death of Dave Myers called time on the Hairy Bikers. Now Si King is looking to the future – but this time he’s travelling by train
encoded: Add Britain's Favourite Railway Stations with Si King to your watchlist It’s done,” says Si King. “That’s it. The Bikers were plural. There’s no Hairy Bikers without my mate.” That emphatic loyalty to his late co-presenter, Dave Myers – and the sharp left-turn King’s career is now taking because of it – makes profound sense when you know their shared history. The pair had been close friends for three decades when Myers died of cancer in 2024 – “He doesn’t stop being your best mate just because he’s passed away. That’s never going to go. We were like brothers: we drove each other mad, because we were two very different people, but we absolutely adored each other.” Their friendship was forged over a shared passion for food and motorbikes, while working behind the camera (King as an assistant director and Myers as a make-up artist) on a TV drama in 1992 – and they went on to make more than 30 series together as the Hairy Bikers. “So nobody’s ever going to take his place,” sighs King. “I don’t want to look in the rear-view mirror of my motorcycle and see anyone else there. It’s Dave, you know? And the same when he was leading: I drove hundreds of miles looking at his ugly ass. That’s my memory, that’s what I want to keep. That’s what it was about.” Right now, King seems to have one eye on the road ahead – and his new show for More4, Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations with Si King – and one still looking back over his shoulder. “You have to move forward, but the only way you can do that is by cherishing the memories. Dave and I did 650,000 miles in the saddle together. That’s more than to the Moon and back. “And the experiences we had? I used to say we were probably the two most overstimulated middle-aged men on the planet. We’d be waiting for the drone camera to go up, say, sat at the top of a mountain on two motorcycles with the most incredible views. We’d have walkie-talkies and somebody would come on and go, ‘Right, lads, on you come.’ And we’d just look at each ot…

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Inside Tom Read Wilson's Grand Tour as Celebs Go Dating star continues his magnificent journey
type: item
date: 2026-01-06T15:30:25.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Travel
subject: Magazine
description: From learning how to kiss the hand of a countess, to taking a dip in a chilly Alpine lake.
encoded: Byron, Wilde, Casanova and now Tom Read Wilson. The Grand Tour was the “gap year” of the 17th to 19th centuries; a chance for young aristocrats to complete their cultural and social education in the great capitals of Europe. In his travelogue, which airs on 5, Read Wilson (Celebs Go Dating’s witty receptionist and runner-up in this year’s I’m a Celebrity) traces their tracks – and gets into a few of their scrapes. PARIS Kissing lessons from a countess “Picking up some continental etiquette was an important part of the Grand Tour, and I’m hopeless with that stuff, so I got lessons from an actual countess. She was a descendant of one of Marie Antoinette’s courtiers and had this gorgeous cuckoo clock of an apartment in the heart of Paris that smelled of tuberose, like a magical bubble. She taught me how to kiss her hand properly, then how to eat mille-feuille. I was totally inept: I think I must have been a chicken in a former life, because my elbows kept popping up and she didn’t approve. Even harder, she insisted I eat this exquisite pastry without making the sort of joyous, gustatory ‘Mmmm!’ that came naturally.” Request a brochure and get inspiration for your next holiday LAKE ANNECY Alps the easy way “In the 18th century, there were only two ways to navigate the Alps – go round them on a boat or over them by foot. Young aristocratic gentlemen, of course, wanted to make the minimum effort, so they had themselves carried over the mountains in sedan chairs. Naturally, I got four strapping hunkatrons to carry me, too. I was in awe at their triceps and all the vascularity of their arms. They were straining every sinew – even though I’d skipped breakfast to be as light as possible – so I kept saying, ‘Don’t be a hero, put me down!’ But they wouldn’t. “It was an extraordinary feat because it was so precipitous, but my personal achievement was taking a dip in Lake Annecy, because it was only 9°C. I swam out to a buoy – yes, that’s b-u-o-y – and it was quite a long stretch…

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Si King reaffirms end of The Hairy Bikers as he grieves late Dave Myers: "There's no Hairy Bikers without my mate"
type: item
date: 2026-01-05T17:00:18.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "Nobody’s ever going to take his place."
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "It's done," says Si King. "That’s it. The Bikers were plural. There’s no Hairy Bikers without my mate." That emphatic loyalty to his late co-presenter, Dave Myers – and the sharp left-turn King's career is now taking because of it – makes profound sense when you know their shared history. The pair had been close friends for three decades when Myers died of cancer in 2024 – "He doesn’t stop being your best mate just because he’s passed away. That’s never going to go. We were like brothers: we drove each other mad, because we were two very different people, but we absolutely adored each other." Their friendship was forged over a shared passion for food and motorbikes, while working behind the camera (King as an assistant director and Myers as a make-up artist) on a TV drama in 1992 – and they went on to make more than 30 series together as the Hairy Bikers. "So nobody’s ever going to take his place," sighs King."I don’t want to look in the rear-view mirror of my motorcycle and see anyone else there. It’s Dave, you know? And the same when he was leading: I drove hundreds of miles looking at his ugly ass. That’s my memory, that’s what I want to keep. That’s what it was about." Right now, King seems to have one eye on the road ahead – and his new show for More4, Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations with Si King – and one still looking back over his shoulder. "You have to move forward, but the only way you can do that is by cherishing the memories. Dave and I did 650,000 miles in the saddle together. That's more than to the Moon and back. "And the experiences we had? I used to say we were probably the two most overstimulated middle-aged men on the planet. We’d be waiting for the drone camera to go up, say, sat at the top of a mountain on two motorcycles with the most incredible views. We’d have walkie-talkies and somebody would come on and go, ‘Right, lads, on you come.’ And we’d just look at each other, and look skywa…

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Michael Rosen: "This may sound extraordinary, but I'm not traumatised by the death of my son"
type: item
date: 2025-12-29T17:00:51.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen has had more than his fair share of difficult times – but in his latest book, he comes up with hints on how to find the positive.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "This may sound extraordinary,” says Michael Rosen, “but I’m not traumatised by the death of my son.” While I try to take that in, the broadcaster and writer continues. “And I’m not traumatised by having been in a coma for 40 days. I’m concerned, I’m worried, I’m saddened, I’m all those things. But that word ‘trauma’ means something else: it comes from German, the idea of a dream you can’t get out of – you’re stuck in it, and at a loss. And I can genuinely say: I think about it, but I’m not stuck. I can love my son who died, and live with it, and not feel traumatised by it.” It’s perhaps the ultimate affidavit for Rosen’s new book, Good Days. There are plenty of self-appointed gurus out there telling us how to live our “best lives”, but Rosen is a man who’s faced some truly dark times – and if he can come out the other side untraumatised, his advice is probably worth listening to. He’s written before about the sudden death of his son, Eddie, aged 18, in 1999, and about his own near-death experience with Covid, and that almost biblical-sounding 40-day coma. (He’s also, of course, written, some of Britain’s best-loved children’s poetry, including the classic We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.) But this is his most practical work yet, an ‘A-Z of Hope and Happiness’ as the publishers have subtitled it – complete with not just the author’s trademark profound-but-amusing observations on life, but also “hints, reminders, tips and suggestions” that readers might want to “imitate, adapt or adopt”. Rosen is a natural pedagogue: his much-memed poetry readings are as popular with kids as his studies of language are on Radio 4’s Word of Mouth, which returns for its 34th year this week. But the tone of Good Days is anything but lecturing. “It’s a little bit like a recipe book,” he agrees. “It’s saying, ‘If you want to try and make a cake this way, then this is how you can do it’. It doesn’t tell you that’s what you have to do. So, for…

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Blackadder's Ben Elton reveals how Stephen Fry responded to his "few-holds-barred" portrayal in new memoir
type: item
date: 2025-11-28T17:01:14.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Author, comedian and dramatist Ben Elton found writing his autobiography therapeutic – but will the many famous friends he mentions agree?
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Ben Elton, it’s obvious, is slightly floored by the question – but it’s actually pretty straightforward: “Why does everybody hate you?” Maybe it’s because the query comes not from me, interviewing him over Zoom from Australia where he now lives. (In fact I find him the very opposite of hateable: frank, funny, thoughtful, self-aware and generous.) No, the question in question comes from the publisher of Elton’s new autobiography – and good friend – Larry. “When I took him the idea, it was his first comment,” says Elton. “Not ‘Oh great, I can’t wait to hear you on the subject of Blackadder’, but ‘You’ll have to address the question: Why does everybody hate you?’” The answer – like everything else in Elton’s book/life – is tackled with head-on humour. “Everybody doesn’t hate me. That’s why I’ve written 16 novels,” he says (modestly neglecting to mention the smash-hit musicals, seminal stand-up routines and million-dollar movies he’s written, nor even national-fabric sitcoms such as The Young Ones, Blackadder and Upstart Crow). “But clearly I irritate some people. My gaucheness, my enthusiasm, my Mickey Rooney tendencies – ‘Let’s do the show! It’s going to be brilliant!’ – I can see how that would irritate people, especially in Britain, which has a default approval of false humility. If my dear friend Stephen is doing an interview about his book, he’ll say [excellent impression of Mr Fry], ‘Oh, it’s awful, pure nonsense. Don’t read it, let’s talk about something else!’ – and people love that. “But I’ll say, ‘It’s the best thing I’ve done, I’m so pleased with it, please read it!’ – and that doesn’t seem to wash. In the book, I deal with a few people who’ve been mean about me [they really have, and he really does], but I think I’ve done it in a nice way and paid respect. I think I’ve got it just right – but there I go again!” So why write a memoir and not, say, novel number 17? “I started to think about an autobiography…

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Bob Geldof talks always being bored of Band Aid, the end of rock 'n' roll and Taylor Swift
type: item
date: 2025-11-24T17:01:57.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: audio
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "I don’t think there's any more we can do with Band Aid."
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Not many people change the world, but Bob Geldof did. So why is he so ambivalent about his achievements with Live Aid? Geldof and writer Paul Vallely discuss their new book Live Aid: The Definitive 40-Year Story. Let’s start with you, Bob. Or should we call you Bobsy, or Brother Teresa, as the new Live Aid book reveals you’re sometimes known? BOB GELDOF No, Bobsy is just something Freddie Mercury used to call me. He’d get on the phone and go, “Well, Bobsy darling…” And Brother Teresa is a joke I made up for the foreword of this book. Normally I’m just called things like “irritating”. Did you think in 1985 that we’d all still be sitting here talking about Live Aid 40 years later? BG: No. I mean, after seven years I got these silver models of the Band Aid logo made up and inscribed to say thank you to the guys who’d helped, because I thought, “That’s it, there’s no need for us to exist. We’re not going to be Save the Children and go on for ever.” So we had a dinner – everyone was overwhelmed that I was buying dinner, for a start – and I handed them out, and I gave one to myself, which is in the cupboard somewhere. And that was 33 years ago. But the need for us to press on became apparent. People kept supporting us. PAUL VALLELY: £2 million still comes in every year [through the Band Aid Trust]. BG: But I get bored so easily. In this case that’s mitigated by the effect Band Aid’s still having – it’s keeping millions of people going – and by the rage I feel when I see injustice. But, being very honest, often this s**t bores me. You’re bored of Band Aid? BG: It always bored me. So does making records, so does rehearsing. It bores the arse off me. I only did one day’s rehearsal for the current Boomtown Rats tour. Can’t stand it. If I forget the words, I’ll make them up on the hoof. That’s the way I am. PV: Let me contradict you, Bob. You are one of the most sustained, resilient, persistent, driven people that I’ve ever …

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Medieval Prince Harry "would have killed" William, imagines Young James Bond author – as he compares King Charles to a murdered monarch
type: item
date: 2025-11-18T00:01:10.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Singer, comedian, actor, author... not one to rest on his laurels, Charlie Higson's latest book is a joyful and irreverent romp through 1,000 colourful years of the British monarchy.
encoded: When I thank Charlie Higson for joining me, he says, “Oh, it’s a pleasure to talk about myself!” Which is awkward, as we’re not really here to talk about him at all. It’s not that he’s not interesting: he’s been lead singer in an 80s funk-punk band; the genius behind 90s catchphrase-jackpot The Fast Show; and the acclaimed writer of James Bond novels, children’s books and several successful TV dramas. It’s just that the subject of his new book is even more interesting – red-hot-poker-up-the-bottom interesting, in fact. Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee is a history of our country’s kings and queens, from William I to Charles III. As Higson says, those “bemoaning the behaviour of present-day royals such as Prince Harry… [need reminding of the] alarming, violent, often sordid” stuff their predecessors got away with, including (look away now, Wills) fratricide. Had Harry been a medieval prince, reckons Higson, “he would have killed his brother, locked his father up, taken the throne for himself, and everyone would have said, ‘Hooray! Finally, a good strong king!’ That style of monarchy would have suited him. As an ‘army chap’, he’d have promoted himself as a warrior for his country. Out of all of them, he probably would have been the one who succeeded.” View oEmbed on the source website The outlook would have been less rosy for Meghan: “This idea that she’s corrupted him – turned him into a woke, Netflix-documentary-making poodle – would have seen her besmirched as a she-wolf, like Queen Isabella [of France]”. And not much better for Charles: Higson sees the current King as a modern-day Edward II (he of red-hot poker fame), whose “own wife shoved him into a castle, locked him up and murdered him. That would have been Charles’s fate”. My conversation with Higson took place before the latest revelations concerning the King’s own errant brother, Andrew, but the author’s not shy about making criminal comparisons. “It’s like The Godfather,” he says. “There’s this family dynasty, …

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Exploring Zambia, the star of BBC One's Kingdom
type: item
date: 2025-11-05T10:53:40.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Travel
description: Drama, action, comedy – African wildlife has it all. So, how can you get exclusive access to the stars of Kingdom?
encoded: The elephant in the room here is an actual elephant in the room. I’ve popped back to my safari camp suite for a post-lunch nap, you see, and found a 900-stone pachyderm in my sitting area. (The Albida Suite has open walls and it turns out Nelly and friends like to wander in to drink from its plunge pool.) This is one of the perks of doing a safari in Zambia rather than more touristed destinations such as Kenya or South Africa – and is possibly why David Attenborough and the crew of Kingdom chose Zambia for its epic four-year shoot. The natural history blockbuster, which follows four animal families over almost half a decade, was shot in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, and that’s where I began my own, sadly rather briefer, safari. Nkwali Camp, which I’d booked through experts Robin Pope Safaris (robinpopesafaris.net), gazes aristocratically down over a hippo-filled river, its collection of breezy wood-and-thatch cottages seemingly playing hide-and-seek with each other in a forest of ebony trees. Browse this safari holiday from Newmarket Holidays & experience your own trip to Africa Game drives are undertaken in 4WDs with a couple of rows of seats fixed high on the vehicle’s back end – so everyone gets a great view, and in a further crucial contrast with the sometimes cattle-truck experience of a safari in such honeypot destinations as Kenya’s Maasai Mara or South Africa’s Kruger, it soon becomes apparent that we have the animals more or less to ourselves. When, within minutes of the beginning of my first drive, we come across a small herd of zebras, I wait for what I previously thought was the inevitable chug-chug-chug of a dozen other vehicles joining us – and it never comes. “Exclusivity” is a much-bandied word in luxury travel, but here it’s more than a mere snobbish refusal to holiday with Ordinary Folk. Without a ravening pack of Land Cruisers waiting to descend every time an animal is spotted, you feel as if you’re really interacting with the landscape an…

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Sally Magnusson dishes on King Charles III reporting the weather – and why she doesn't miss Reporting Scotland following 27-year run
type: item
date: 2025-10-28T00:01:35.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: After an eventful three decades on TV news, broadcaster Sally Magnusson is refocusing her efforts on her literary endeavours.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Ask Sally Magnusson what she misses after finishing her 27-year run on Reporting Scotland six months ago, and the long pause while she tries to think of something is as telling as her actual answer. “I’ll be incredibly honest with you,” she says eventually. “I don’t really miss it. I miss colleagues, but I’m still on the WhatsApp group, and we meet up.” So she now gets all the perks with none of the work? “Well, yes. But I don’t get the money, either.” Certainly Magnusson earned her wages: across her years on Reporting Scotland, Breakfast Time and others, she recalls covering such dark times as Dunblane, Lockerbie, Zeebrugge, Princess Diana’s funeral and Covid – which she found just as harrowing in its way as those other, more dramatic stories. But there were happier moments, too (“so many!”). And, pushed for examples, this time there is no hesitation at all. “One of the most joyful was the day that Prince Charles and Camilla came and did the weather on my programme. That was a huge amount of fun, especially trying to get Camilla to do it. Charles read off the autocue with great aplomb and did the whole thing very well, but when I asked Camilla she said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly!’ Charles encouraged her, though, and he held her handbag while she had a go. She wasn’t quite as good as him… but be careful how you tell that story, because I don’t want to make it look as if she was terrible.” (If you’re worried that RT has just blown Magnusson’s chances of an honour, relax: she got her MBE in 2023.) Now, at any rate, the 70-year-old has time to write. Previously, she’d squeezed her literary output in around the day job and bringing up five children – all the more remarkable when you consider the breadth of her work, from a moving memoir of her mother’s dementia (“I wanted to describe her at each stage, so I would never forget how she smiled, or moved her hands through her hair, or put her lipstick on”) to children’s st…

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Michael Palin reveals how a Monty Python sketch saved him from being thrown in a Venezuelan jail
type: item
date: 2025-10-20T20:00:34.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Sir Michael Palin’s wanderlust is undimmed at 82, but how does the comedian defuse a dangerous situation?
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. You could almost hear the sigh of collective disappointment from the country’s female population. I’d asked Michael Palin – perhaps a little insensitively, given it’s only two and a half years since his wife of 57 years died – if he might be looking for a new travelling companion. And the answer was polite (of course) but emphatic: “I do miss Helen very much on holidays. I was away with all my children and grandchildren in Italy recently, and it was lovely, but I realised I was 25 years older than the next oldest person there. You do need someone your own age to share your perspective and roll your eyes with – but I’m not really in the market for meeting anyone else.” Bad news for the nation’s womenfolk, perhaps – anyone who’s seen any of his TV travelogues knows he’d be the perfect person to squire you around foreign climes – but at least we all get to accompany the former Python in his witty, insightful, lightly learned written accounts. The latest of these, Michael Palin in Venezuela, accompanies September’s three-part series of the same name. But why Venezuela? “The decisions on where we go are taken by myself and Neil Ferguson, the director. He’s the one who says, ‘I want to go somewhere else,’ while I’m saying, ‘I’d rather stay in bed for a couple more days.’ But I never really want to stay in bed or sit in one place too long: I love travelling. It’s a form of global fidgeting.” It sounds like he has a travel companion already then. Do they bicker like a couple? “Oh no, I’m far too agreeable. We have constructive conversations. I say, ‘I’m 82. I might fall over if I go there.’ He says, ‘You’ll be fine.’ And Channel 5 – who are presumably paying the insurance bill – seem very keen to keep me travelling, too.” That still doesn’t explain Venezuela, I point out. “It’s always been a mysterious country to me, but with something seductive about its name. It also fits the bill for what we try to do in these shows, w…

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As seen on Apple TV's The Last Frontier: Discover Alaska the luxurious way
type: item
date: 2025-10-14T13:00:56.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Travel
description: Want to explore wild Alaska without the fear of frostbite? A cosseting cruise offers hot tubs and fine dining alongside spectacular scenery.
encoded: “This is Alaska,” says local lawman Frank Remnick (Jason Clarke) to his CIA counterpart as they consider the difficulties of rounding up 18 convicts on the loose across the state’s frozen wastes in Apple TV’s The Last Frontier. Daunting, sure, but “This is Alaska, too,” I think to myself as I accept some champagne and nibble a Princess Love Boat Dream – a “heart-shaped dessert with layers of chocolate-raspberry mousse and vanilla-raspberry cream on a shortbread cookie base” – on board the Grand Princess, where I’m experiencing Alaska in rather more comfort than Remnick or his 18 unwelcome guests. Request a brochure and get inspiration for your next holiday While The Last Frontier’s frostbitten felons check in (and, in some cases, promptly check out) when their prisoner transport plane crash[1]lands in the middle of a snowy forest, my Air Canada jet glides safely into Vancouver. There I spend a few very pleasant days among its excellent food markets, parks and beaches before boarding Grand Princess for my Voyage of the Glaciers cruise, which will wind its delightfully unhurried way north to Anchorage. Three ‘port days’ give me a flavour of the Last Frontier (also Alaska’s official state nickname); two ‘scenic cruising’ days provide spectacular views of glaciers and icebergs without my even having to leave the (extreme) comfort of my hot tub; and the itinerary’s single ‘sea day’ allows me to savour the ship’s spas, bars and even ‘Movies under the Stars’, where I happily goggle a Harry Potter on the open top deck’s huge screen, hunkered under a blanket with cookies. Slightly more adventurous are the 150-odd excursions available through Grand Princess (similar ones can be booked independently, of course). Options range from mild to wild, but each one drops you deeper into the landscape or lifestyle of Alaska than the ship alone ever could. Each port day, helicopters whisk passengers up to other-worldly icefields where huskies howl; floatplanes trace fjords and emerald i…

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Jane Goodall: 'We must all do our bit to make the world a better place'
type: item
date: 2025-10-02T11:29:41.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Interview
description: The legendary conservationist on her life among chimpanzees, battling sexism, and why hope is hard work.
encoded: This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in November 2021, to promote the BBC Radio 4 drama In the Shadow of Man. Most people would be quite excited to have a play about their life on Radio 4. Ethologist Jane Goodall, however, admits she's "getting used to that sort of thing. And wait till you see who's playing me in the film that's being made..." She won't name names, but bearing in mind "it's got Leonardo DiCaprio behind it", we can expect someone fairly stellar. And perhaps, at last, Goodall will stop being mistaken for fellow primate expert Dian Fossey, who was played by Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist. "Everybody mixes us up," sighs Goodall. "But it can be funny. I was on a plane once, and the flight attendant said, 'It's an honour to have you on board, Miss Fossey.' I smiled, and didn't say anything, and thought, 'She's going to go and tell people who she had on her flight today, and they're going to tell her that Dian Fossey's dead, and she's going to think she's seen a ghost.'" Even if people don't know Goodall's face, they're living in a world profoundly shaped by her work. Transplanting herself from genteel Bournemouth to the jungles of Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park in 1960, she was the first to record evidence of tool use by chimpanzees. "I saw what we now call termite fishing," she recalls. "A chimp broke off a grass stem, pushed it down into the termite mound, then pulled it very carefully out and picked off the termites to eat. And boom! It was so remarkable – and I had such a mix of amazement and disbelief – that I didn't even send a telegram until I'd seen it on a few more occasions. Because at that time, Man was defined as the only creature capable of using tools." Put simply, Goodall's observations redefined humanity. Her discoveries helped convince a sceptical scientific establishment that chimps and humans shared a common ancestor. She saw their emotional depth up close, watching chimps hug, kiss and even tickle e…

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Dame Jane Goodall: 'We must all do our bit to make the world a better place'
type: item
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The legendary conservationist on her life among chimpanzees, battling sexism, and why hope is hard work.
encoded: This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in November 2021, to promote the BBC Radio 4 drama In the Shadow of Man. Most people would be quite excited to have a play about their life on Radio 4. Ethologist Jane Goodall, however, admits she's "getting used to that sort of thing. And wait till you see who's playing me in the film that's being made..." She won't name names, but bearing in mind "it's got Leonardo DiCaprio behind it", we can expect someone fairly stellar. And perhaps, at last, Goodall will stop being mistaken for fellow primate expert Dian Fossey, who was played by Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist. "Everybody mixes us up," sighs Goodall. "But it can be funny. I was on a plane once, and the flight attendant said, 'It's an honour to have you on board, Miss Fossey.' I smiled, and didn't say anything, and thought, 'She's going to go and tell people who she had on her flight today, and they're going to tell her that Dian Fossey's dead, and she's going to think she's seen a ghost.'" Even if people don't know Goodall's face, they're living in a world profoundly shaped by her work. Transplanting herself from genteel Bournemouth to the jungles of Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park in 1960, she was the first to record evidence of tool use by chimpanzees. "I saw what we now call termite fishing," she recalls. "A chimp broke off a grass stem, pushed it down into the termite mound, then pulled it very carefully out and picked off the termites to eat. And boom! It was so remarkable – and I had such a mix of amazement and disbelief – that I didn't even send a telegram until I'd seen it on a few more occasions. Because at that time, Man was defined as the only creature capable of using tools." Put simply, Goodall's observations redefined humanity. Her discoveries helped convince a sceptical scientific establishment that chimps and humans shared a common ancestor. She saw their emotional depth up close, watching chimps hug, kiss and even tickle e…

Rob Brydon reveals why he initially turned down new BBC series – and what changed his mind
type: item
date: 2025-09-29T23:01:10.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Entertainment
subject: TV
subject: BBC
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: A new series sees Rob Brydon journey around the southern states of the US to discover the origins of country music.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Be honest, Rob. Do you actually like country music? I am genuinely very fond of it and genuinely keen to know more. When [the BBC] first offered me this [three-part series], I declined it because I thought, “I’m no authority on country music”, and it might be perceived as a little opportunistic. But then they came back with the angle of discovering it and I thought, “Well, that entitles me to do it”. Because when some Johnny off the TV like me swans off to make a documentary, I think there has to be a reason for it. You’re being too modest. You’re actually a country music superstar: your version of Islands in the Stream, with Ruth Jones, got to number one… That was a novelty record for Comic Relief! I tell my kids, “We were at number one for seven days”. But I do do a bit of singing in this series. Among other things, we go to an Elvis Festival in Franklin, Tennessee, and I meet all these Elvi. I put on my Elvis suit, they announce me, I go out on stage… and it’s blank looks all round. I’m not known over there, so it’s just this short, middle-aged Welshman singing Elvis. I really had to hold my nerve. This series takes you right round the southern states. What was your general impression? It’s a whole other country from the rest of the US. Down there, it’s work, play, family and God. We saw a lot of spindly white wooden church steeples, a lot of beautiful disused barns, a lot of lovely open front porches and a lot of food. They’re not on a health kick down there – even the “healthy” options come smothered in a blanket of melted cheese, and the trail mix has M&Ms in it. The people are wonderful though – hugely courteous and very friendly. Take Heidi Parton: she’s Dolly’s niece, and she performs at [her aunt’s theme park] Dollywood. She’s the epitome of southern hospitality – if any holiday-maker goes up and says “Hello”, she’ll stay and chat with them. There are a few “eccentrics” out there in the backwoods though,…

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Gavin & Stacey icon Joanna Page dishes on her new memoir Lush! - and why she wrote it in the car at 5am
type: item
date: 2025-09-25T14:40:35.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: RT Book Club
description: From career lows to Gavin & Stacey, Joanna Page’s memoir Lush! tells all. But why did she write it in her car at 5am?
encoded: “I’m probably not even allowed to say this,” confides Joanna Page, pausing for perhaps 0.4 seconds before saying it anyway. “I wanted to call my book ‘Breathe Through Your Anus’.” The explanation tumbles out just as quickly (“It’s something our teacher at Rada told us to do, and I thought it was quite a fitting title”), but it’s typical of the way the Gavin & Stacey star talks: winningly wide-eyed, utterly unfiltered, 19 (or 20!) to the dozen, and always on the edge of laughter. In the end – and in a nod to one of Stacey’s most repeated lines – Page has called her memoir Lush! It’s no less frank or relatable (or scatologically funny) for all that, though. “When I realised I was going to write a book,” she admits in the acknowledgements, “I got over-excited, thought I was Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City and went straight out to buy a handbag I could carry my notepad and pens in. Then I realised I was going to have to actually write the thing and s**t myself.” It turns out she was right to panic, as producing a book when you’ve got four young children, four guinea pigs and two dogs to look after is no breeze. “I’d go and sit in our garage to write, and my husband would be like, ‘I’ll look after all of them’ – but that apparently involves him popping in every five minutes to ask me something. So then I started going to car parks to write, just sitting there in my car trying to get it done in the middle of the night until I thought ‘This is getting a bit dodgy’ – or maybe a bit dogging-y – so I’d go back and park outside my own house, not daring to go inside in case I woke the kids, and keep writing in my car till five in the morning.” Refreshingly for an actor’s autobiography, she’s just as candid about her career lows: lad-mag photographers getting her drunk for raunchy shoots, mendacious directors tricking her into sex scenes, a handsy TV presenter trying to feel her up on set (she won’t name him because “he’s not on telly any more. He got his comeuppance”). An…

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Adam Kay argues the NHS is the UK’s greatest institution but “one of the worst employers”
type: item
date: 2025-09-08T23:01:44.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Books
subject: Magazine
subject: RT Book Club
description: The debut novel of former doctor Adam Kay is a medical mystery that shines a stark light on the NHS today.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “Hopefully everyone out there thinks I look like Ben Whishaw,” says Adam Kay. And it’s quite possible they do: Whishaw played Kay in the BBC’s 2022 adaptation of his mega-selling medical memoir This Is Going to Hurt. “My main criterion when casting it was ‘extremely handsome’,” admits Kay. But he’s less concerned with the looks of the leading man in any screen version of his new book – and first novel – A Particularly Nasty Case. “There’s only 20 per cent of me in [the main character] Eitan,” explains the author. “He’s a very messy doctor, and I like to think that I wasn’t quite that messy.” “Messy” may be an understatement though: in the darkly funny thriller, Eitan is a consultant rheumatologist (“the least sexy part of medicine”), returning to work after time off with a bipolar condition, who becomes convinced that his manager’s death from a heart attack was actually murder. “So it starts not as a ‘whodunnit’ but as an ‘ifdunnit’,” says Kay. If you think that sounds far-fetched, think again. Kay writes with all the authority of a man who spent six years as an NHS doctor before becoming a writer, but nevertheless had a team of “medical advisers” check the manuscript. “I’m 15 years out of the game now – it would be a major roll of the dice asking me for medical advice – so I got some clever friends of mine to read the book and flag anything they thought wouldn’t work. Worryingly, they gave it a clean bill of health.” It was important for Kay to get the science right, he says (and he admiringly mentions Agatha Christie “because as a trained pharmacist, all the poison knowledge in her books is absolutely spot-on”). But what about the human side? Doctors don’t really do away with their rivals, do they? “Well, I hope I wasn’t the only student at medical school who listened to lectures and thought, ‘Oh, well that would be quite a good way to kill someone.’ Luckily, I had just about enough morals to never go through wi…

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Whitstable Pearl offers a taste of the Kent coast – and the real star is the location
type: item
date: 2025-08-12T15:30:56.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Travel
subject: Magazine
description: Inspired by the Kent-set crime drama Whitstable Pearl, our writer takes you to the real Whitstable – a working harbour town where salty breezes, shingle beaches and freshly shucked oysters are the stars of the show.
encoded: Kerry Godliman pioneered it, but I’m naming it. Whitstable Pearl is “seafood noir” – and if it hasn’t yet inspired a whole copycat TV genre (which it probably will), it has certainly inspired a few visits to its real-world milieu. The crime show, set on the Kent coast, is currently into its third series of salty, sinister murders and lingering glances across the shingle, with Godliman as the seafood-slinging sleuth. But the true star is the location: real-life Whitstable has all the bobbing oyster yawls, creaking hulls and fresh-fish-fuelled charm of the show, but without simmering suspense between mussels and main course. Browse our tours of the UK and Ireland here Truth be told, you don’t need a murder mystery to find intrigue in Whitstable. A short hop from London – under 80 minutes by train – it’s long on seaside appeal. The harbour is still working, the high street still hosts actual marine supplies stores among the Breton-top-toting boutiques, and there’s still the sense that locals would be here with or without the influx of weekenders and the occasional TV camera crew. Start, as Godliman’s Pearl Nolan herself might, with a wander along Harbour Street. It’s a pick ’n’ mix of vintage stores, artist-run galleries and those irresistibly browsable little shops where everything seems to smell of driftwood and lavender. A few steps farther is the Harbour Market, where oysters are shucked to order for just £2.50 each, and you can pick up nautical knick-knacks. It’s either delightfully authentic or one puff of wind away from twee, depending on your mood and how many Whitstable Brewery Oyster Stouts you’ve had from the open-air bar next to the oyster-shuckers… The beach itself is no golden-sanded sprawl; instead, it’s a salt-tang shinglescape, fringed with candy-coloured beach huts and shaped by centuries of North Sea breezes. It’s a beach for dog-walkers and daydreamers, not for sandcastles or sunbathing, though when I visited last month the water was warm enough for…

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Rhys James reveals why a US version of Mock the Week is probably not happening
type: item
date: 2025-08-04T23:01:45.000Z
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Comedy is a way of controlling embarrassment for Rhys James – so did writing his memoirs burst his balloon?
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Did you hear the one about the stand-up comedian who’s actually a complete introvert? Well go ahead and laugh, says Rhys James, Live at the Apollo luminary and perennial panellist on BBC2’s Mock the Week. He describes his first book, out this week, as “a dread memoir” – then adds, hurriedly, “but funny”. “Sorry, it’s hard to explain your own book, because it’s like describing yourself on a dating app: ‘Aren’t I amazing?!’” he says. “But it’s not about the dark, horrible, scary kind of dread: it’s about the dread of small, social things, like having to go for a couples dinner, or go down the pub, or make a speech – and this massive underlying fear of things going wrong or being embarrassing.” In fact, You’ll Like It When You Get There is perhaps best summed up by its revelation that the sentence James feared most as a child was “Come downstairs and say hello”. And that when plans are cancelled, he still “celebrates with an Andy Murray fist pump”. And a howl-out-loud anecdote about pretending to be French to avoid conversation (in fact, three anecdotes about pretending to be French). So far, so relatable – but why then become a comic? “Introverts aren’t just those skulk-in-the-corner guys; it’s more complicated than that. If you go to the pub with me, I in no way seem like an introvert, because I’ll be dominating conversation – I won’t shut up. But that’s how introversion manifests for me: I’m ‘confident-presenting’. I’m desperately trying for there not to be a silence, because my introverted brain can’t hack it. "My ‘villain origin story’ is when I was 14 and had my trousers and pants pulled down in front of classmates, and I vowed to get laughs on my own terms for ever more – and actually stand-up comedy is a great way of controlling the situation. It suits an introvert because you’re basically saying, ‘All face me and I’ll speak!’ If someone shouts out, you basically go, ‘Shut up!’ And that’s what being an introv…

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'Every character is a part of me, even the nutters'
type: item
creator: Ed Grenby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: More than 30 years on from the original, Irvine Welsh reveals why he’s written a new sequel to Trainspotting
encoded: Add Trainspotting to your watchlist. To order Men In Love for below its RRP, click here. Ewan McGregor as Renton, Robert Carlyle as Begbie, Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy… whether you know Trainspotting from having read the book, watched the films or just from the famous movie posters, you will undoubtedly find it hard to picture anybody else as those characters. Yet, there’s a cocky young upstart who thinks he could do a job there if Trainspotting’s sequel, Men in Love – published on 22 July – gets the adaptation treatment. “I could probably play them all quite well,” reckons Irvine Welsh, the 66-year-old author of both novels. “I think I could do a decent hard man for Begbie; the cynical outsider, like Renton; I can probably have a go at the lover, Sick Boy; and I can definitely do the hapless fool, lovable loser thing for Spud. It’s because every character you write is a part of you, even the nutters. All you can really hope for is that the nutters are repressed parts of you.” In fact, Welsh played small parts in both Trainspotting films, and when asked about a possible big ten-hour, Netflix-style series based on Men in Love, he says he’s “been working with Bobby Carlyle on something like that, but I’d love to just get some brilliant young actors and recast the whole lot again, starting from [prequel] Skagboys”. So could he pip McGregor to the lead role? “The casting people might have something to say about that. And the Hollywood financiers wouldn’t be too enthused either.” Still, stranger things have happened. Welsh expects his West End musical version of Trainspotting to open next year and he’s also collaborated on a “disco soul album” released as a companion to Men in Love this week. There are surprises in store for his characters, too. Although it picks up just after Trainspotting finishes, the story’s “heroes” are changed – or at least changing – men. Renton is, says Welsh, “looking for love”; Spud has “found the girl of his dreams” and Sick Boy is even consi…

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