Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2022-11-21T15:53:37.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: When Radio Times came to tea with Judith Kerr
items: Is Silent Witness realistic? 5 tips to spot the fact from fiction
items: Nick Robinson on Today, troubles with his voice, and the EU referendum
items: Why Spanish thriller Locked Up could be the new Orange is the New Black
items: Top tips for designing a Radio Times cover fit for a Queen
items: Emma Bunton on a Spice Girls reunion and dancing around the kitchen to Wannabe
items: Mary Beard is glad to be grey: "I can sit in the library with my grey hair until I'm 102 and no one will bat an eyelid"
items: What should I watch? Girls
items: Kylie on Christmas in the Minogue house
items: Nick Grimshaw: My job is all about "celebrity fluff" – but the Teen Awards are different
items: Myleene Klass on Singing in the Rainforest: "The islanders thanked us for giving them a voice"
items: Taylor Swift should play Glastonbury, says Edith Bowman
items: Giles Coren on taxing the fat, being an "urban food ponce" and why life wasn't better in the 1950s
items: Chris O'Dowd on Moone Boy, fatherhood and binge watching Broadchurch
items: The secrets of Taking New York: putting the structure in structured reality
items: Sherlock's Mrs Hudson gets arty in The Great British Paint Off
items: Bafta Film Awards 2015: Zoë Ball on taking to the red carpet, Strictly and her TV favourites
items: The Great British Sewing Bee's Patrick Grant says "sewing isn't girly"
items: Catastrophe's Sharon Horgan: I've mined my life for comedy
items: Psychobitches: Michelle Gomez and Rebecca Front's comedy heroes… and Margaret Thatcher
items: Nick Hornby: "Novels should be like TV"
items: Sarah Beeny: "I’m a massive Prince Charles fan"
items: Nicola Adams: Pioneering female boxing champion to take Commonwealth Games by storm
items: Meet the new generation of home nation sporting stars
items: Wimbledon 2014: Virginia Wade on the women to watch
items: Wimbledon 2014: Tim Henman on the men to watch
items: William Boyd and PD James on bringing Bond to life and adopting Mr Darcy
items: Claudia Winkleman on The Great British Sewing Bee: “I fell in love several times filming the series”
items: Australian Open: Andy Murray is "the man to beat"

When Radio Times came to tea with Judith Kerr
type: item
date: 2019-05-23T10:00:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Books
subject: Drama
subject: Going Out
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
subject: Family
description: A Martini Rosso at lunch and other secrets to a long life from the celebrated children's author and designer of the 2014 Radio Times Christmas cover
encoded: This article was originally published in December 2014 You're known for The Tiger Who Came to Tea and the Mog books – but what was your starting point for our cover? Panic! I couldn’t think what to do. Eventually I said, “What about a child holding a cat?” I had no trouble at all drawing the child, or the cat, but the bloody parcels! I’m doing a black-and-white picture book about a seal at the moment and haven’t used colour for quite a long time so I’m out of practice. You’re 91. What’s the secret to a long and successful working life? You have to make a plan for the day. I get started at 10.30am. At lunchtime, I have a Martini Rosso on ice which keeps me awake in the afternoon. In the evening, I go for an hour’s walk along the Thames. It helps me to think. When I get home, I have a whisky. I’ve done more work since Tom [Judith’s husband, Quatermass screenwriter Thomas Nigel Kneale] died eight years ago than I did before because otherwise there’s this emptiness. You fled Berlin with your family the day before Hitler came to power. Do you prefer an English or a German Christmas? I never got used to English Christmasses. In Germany you celebrate on Christmas Eve. My father [intellectual Alfred Kerr] would play Silent Night on the piano, but because Germans don’t wrap presents I’d be singing while peering over to the table to see what I’d got. Your father didn’t live to see you publish books. What would he think of your success? He would be so pleased. He’d encourage me when I didn’t think I was good enough at drawing. Once I said, “Why am I doing this?” He said, “Because you’ll always think less of yourself if you don’t.” What are your goals for 2015? RT hears your 1971 children’s novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit may be adapted by the BBC... That would be terrific. They came to my house and the way the writer talked about it was very much how I thought it should be. And I want to finish the seal book! [Laughs] I don’t want to blame Radio Times, but if it hadn’t bee…

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Is Silent Witness realistic? 5 tips to spot the fact from fiction
type: item
date: 2017-04-21T08:00:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Silent Witness's forensic pathology advisor Dr Stuart Hamilton explains how he keeps TV crime scenes accurate – and what the show gets wrong
encoded: Like the show? Share the love! 1 "On Silent Witness, it’s important to me that we get the pathology as accurate as possible," explains Dr Hamilton. "The descriptions of the injury have to be just right. "But at the same time it has to be good television drama. Toxicology tests usually take about six weeks to come back but we can’t have Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox) waiting around for six weeks because that timescale makes rubbish TV. You have to keep the authenticity without compromising the drama." "Emilia Fox is meticulous about getting things right. She’s determined that the actions which are second nature to me – as a real life forensic pathologist – look second nature to her onscreen. A less experienced actress might say, 'We obviously do it like this,' but Emilia is very quick to say, 'Can we just double check things?' "Scriptwriters always want you to narrow down the time of death to within five minutes," according to Hamilton. "I can understand why – it’s an important part of the story, placing certain people in certain places – but almost impossible to do. "In real life, what I’ve said in Crown Court inquests is that the most accurate you can be is to give the time of death as the window between when the victim was last seen by a witness, and when they were pronounced dead." "The writers will come to me and say, 'We want to end up with this cause of death'. I then have to work backwards and come up with pathology tests that lead us to that conclusion. It’s great that the writers listen to people like me as much as they do. I’ve seen drama on other channels where they just make up the pathology as they go along, but on Silent Witness, they’re so enthusiastic about getting every storyline as close to reality as possible without it becoming tedious." "One of the things I initially struggled with was that the pathologists on the show got so involved in the police investigation. In real life, I go to a crime scene, do the autopsy and then maybe three months later…

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Nick Robinson on Today, troubles with his voice, and the EU referendum
type: item
date: 2016-06-24T04:30:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Current Affairs
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Since undergoing surgery and chemotherapy for lung cancer, Robinson's voice will never be what it once was
encoded: Describe a night in on the sofa with the family Robinson. Everyone has their place. Harry, 15, insists he can only sit on the right side of the sofa so that he can plug his laptop in because he’s a teenager and has to be looking at three screens at all times – phone, TV, laptop. The 19-year-old, Will, only sits in the easy chair. He’s very much in charge of the seating plan and the remote. What do you watch? The thing that brings the family together is football [Robinson also has a 21-year-old daughter, Alice]. We’re all Manchester United fans. What’s the Robinson verdict on the hiring of José Mourinho? We want to get back to winning ways and Mourinho is nothing if not a winner. But we love the idea of being the young flair team with attacking players and that’s not always José’s way. As an aside, I’ve been practising my pronunciation of José. You pronounce the “J” in Portuguese, apparently. I got it wrong on air the other day and got told off by lots of listeners. Is that a common occurrence? Yes. The great thing about the Today listeners is that they’re very clever and can’t understand why some people don’t know as much as them on certain subjects. If you’re on 5Live you get people writing in saying that you’ve got your football facts wrong, but on Radio 4 they pull you up on your Portuguese pronunciation. You had a rocky start on the Today programme... I’d been unwell [he underwent surgery and chemotherapy for lung cancer] and my voice was very bad. My first day was covering the November Paris terror attacks – I was on my own in the studio and I was interviewing the prime minister. My voice was croaky and I felt like I’d underperformed. But my wife [Pippa, a relationship counsellor] said, “It’s a weird series of circumstances, you’ll be fine.” How’s your voice now? It will never be fully recovered. Lots of people say it sounds normal now and I can’t tell you how much of a morale boost that is, but I’m like a runner with a knee injury. To anyone else I look fine b…

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Why Spanish thriller Locked Up could be the new Orange is the New Black
type: item
date: 2016-05-17T12:12:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Need a break from Scandi noir? Channel 4's new thriller could be the next great Euro drama
encoded: There is one country conspicuous by its absence from the list of subtitled treats on our television screens. While Spain has a world-renowned film industry, it has yet to produce an internationally successful TV drama. But that could be about to change. Set in a fictional, high security women’s prison on the outskirts of Madrid, Locked Up (Vis a Vis in Spanish, which is slang for “conjugal visits”) focuses on the misfortune of Macarena Ferreiro, a timid former accountant who is sentenced to seven years behind bars for tax fraud, which she naively committed at the request of her millionaire former boss and lover. Pretty, middle-class and from a close-knit family, Macarena is an all-too-easy target for the murderers, drug addicts and career fraudsters who populate Cruz del Sur prison. To make matters worse, on Macarena’s first night a cellmate is murdered in the bathroom over a stash of €9 million hidden somewhere in Madrid. All of the prisoners are desperate to get their hands on the money, triggering a dangerous face-off between the most powerful inmates that extends beyond the prison walls. “The series has the most violence and sex we’ve ever seen on TV in Spain,” says creator and executive producer Alex Pina. “Spanish viewers are watching more drama – more international drama – and they’re becoming experts. They’ve got a sharper eye for what’s good and we have to keep up with that. Initially I wasn’t that excited by the prospect of a women’s prison but when we sat down to write, we realised that there was huge scope for creating drama. "Having a group of people locked up allows you to explore love, conflict and fear on a much greater scale because the characters have no means of escaping their situation – or each other.” View oEmbed on the source website The reception to the series in Spain (where it first aired in March 2015) proves that Pina has a point. An immediate hit with audiences, attracting over four million viewers per episode, it was commissioned for a …

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Top tips for designing a Radio Times cover fit for a Queen
type: item
date: 2016-04-19T08:00:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Illustrator Nina Cosford gives advice on how to win our competition to design a magazine cover for Queen Elizabeth's 90th birthday
encoded: It takes something special to make the cover of Radio Times – as illustrator Nina Cosford knows well. It took many hours of painstaking sketching for her to create the cover of last week's magazine. “I’m pleased with it,” says the 27-year-old artist from Hastings, whose work is a huge hit in America. “But I’ll only know if it’s a success when I see it on the shelf. It’s a great, bold tradition that Radio Times has of putting illustrations on its cover. Not many magazines do it. “I’ve painted Buckingham Palace a couple of times and it’s about getting the balance between making it architecturally accurate and ensuring it fits the style of the rest of the drawing. I used watercolour pencils for the palace and then strong pencils and markers for the crowd to give it vibrant colour.” The idea behind Nina’s cover is to inspire budding artists to submit a design to our Radio Times Queen at 90 Competition. The winning entry will appear on our cover in June to mark Her Majesty’s official 90th birthday. Cosford’s illustration, in her characteristically bright, loosely sketched style, is the perfect example of what can be achieved with a blank piece of A4 and a handful of colouring pencils. So what’s her main piece of advice for young artists unsure where to begin with their 90th birthday cover design? Keep it simple. “Start by listing what the words ‘Queen’ and ‘birthday’ mean to you,” she suggests. “Then draw lots of different ideas. Don’t worry about making them neat. I go through lots of different stages with my drawing but it all starts from not putting too much pressure on myself.” The winning design, says Cosford, will be original and eye-catching but beyond that there is no set formula. “I used to find it hard to draw on a sheet of crisp, blank paper so I’d pull envelopes out of the bin – that allowed me to be less precious with my drawing. Don’t obsess over doing things ‘the right way’,” she says, brushing pencil sharpenings off the desk. “The secret is finding wGhat …

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Emma Bunton on a Spice Girls reunion and dancing around the kitchen to Wannabe
type: item
date: 2016-03-07T09:36:55.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: "[A reunion] is something we’d love to do, but we need to get organising. It’s a big part of our lives and I’m hoping we can get it together"
encoded: We hear a rumour that the Spice Girls might be reforming... It’s something we’d love to do, but we need to get organising. It’s a big part of our lives and I’m hoping we can get it together. Would Victoria Beckham be on board? Victoria is a Spice Girl through and through, but she’s doing amazing things with designing and I’m not sure it’s something she’d be a part of. But I know for a fact she’d be in the front row cheering us on. When was the last time you danced around your kitchen to the Spice Girls? Just the other week! We dance around the kitchen all the time. My eight-year-old son Beau is obsessed with Little Mix, so now and again I throw a Spice Girl song in there. Wannabe is a favourite, as is Who Do You Think You Are. You’re stranded on a desert island. Which Spice Girl do you choose for company? I could never pick just one. You can’t ask me that! We just did... OK, Geri would be very practical and decisive. Mel B would be an absolute hoot, but we probably wouldn’t survive. Victoria would make me laugh – she’s got the driest sense of humour – but I’m going to go with Mel C. She’d look after me and I’d need a powerhouse character to get me through. You’re on London radio station Heart FM’s breakfast show and now you’re co-hosting a new entertainment show, Too Much TV. How much is too much? Good question! We’ve got three TVs in the house – one in the kitchen, one in the front room and one in the bedroom – and it’s a case of “how can we angle the furniture towards them?” I do monitor how much Beau and Tate [who’s four] watch, though. I get my time after they’ve gone to bed. I’ll watch a reality show or a good drama like Homeland or Grey’s Anatomy. Your co-hosts on Too Much TV are Sara Cox, Rufus Hound and Aled Jones – if one of them dropped out, who would you want as a replacement? I love Dermot O’Leary and Claudia Winkleman. On Strictly she’s got this way of taking the mickey very cleverly. But I’d probably go for Phillip Schofield. And Holly Willoughby is br…

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Mary Beard is glad to be grey: "I can sit in the library with my grey hair until I'm 102 and no one will bat an eyelid"
type: item
date: 2016-03-03T14:40:21.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Documentaries
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The classicist and presenter of Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed says she was told she "looked like a witch" on social media – but says she is glad she never succumbed to dyeing her hair
encoded: Mary Beard was in her early 30s when she started going grey. For a while she toyed with the idea of dyeing her long hair green to shock her colleagues at the University of Cambridge before deciding against colour altogether. “There’s something about hair dye that wouldn’t suit me,” she explains matter-of-factly. “Then at a certain point you have to say, ‘Right, I’m not doing it any longer,’ and you go through months of growing it out. I’m very happy I never got into those dilemmas.” But while Beard’s natural locks went uncommented on in bookish, sensible Cambridge, it was a different story when she started presenting history documentaries on prime time television. “I got tweets saying ‘you look like a witch.’ No, I don’t darling! But you could see how unusual it seemed to people [to have a grey-haired woman on TV]. And then of course dear old AA Gill drew attention to it.” This is Beard, now 61, being good humoured about what must have been a painful personal attack. Gill didn’t just “draw attention” to her hair colour; in a Sunday Times review of her 2012 BBC series Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, he decreed that she should be “kept away from the cameras altogether” unless it was to appear on the Channel 4 series The Undateables. View oEmbed on the source website “I was in America when I read it and you feel like you’ve been punched. But actually, he did quite a lot of good because people really thought that what he said wasn’t on and that I looked perfectly fine. There were certainly people out there who agreed with him - that if you’re appearing in our living rooms you should at least get your teeth and hair sorted - but most people wanted to see figures in public life who looked like real people. It was a good idea to have a discussion about it.” It’s a discussion that Beard expands on in Glad to Be Grey, a new Radio 4 documentary that examines why so many women feel they have no option but to dye their hair as soon as the first salt and pepper hues peep throug…

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What should I watch? Girls
type: item
date: 2016-03-01T13:10:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Sorry, but this is what girls in their 20s are like
encoded: Even if you haven’t watched Girls, chances are you’ve heard about it. A lot. Since it first aired in 2012, the New York-based dramedy about four privileged yet rudderless college friends taking their first steps into the adult world has triggered a new conversation about life as a 20-something woman. Every Girls fan has a “moment”. It could be a line or a whole scene, but it’s the point at which they realise that, despite all the therapy-speak, the show’s smart, hopelessly self-involved characters were speaking their language. For me, it came in season one when Hannah (played by the show’s brilliant creator Lena Dunham) discovers that her boyfriend has been sending explicit message to another girl. “I don’t want a boyfriend,” she tells him assuredly. “I just want someone who thinks I’m the best person in the world and wants to hang out all the time and have sex with only me.” It may sound obvious, but set against a 21st-century dating landscape that seems to prize aloofness and promiscuity, it’s a bold statement. It won neurotic, vulnerable Hannah my love for all time. As sociopathic boyfriends and unpaid internships come and go, the girls’ relationships with each other are their constant. They still argue and dish out fierce home truths, but that’s the point. This isn’t sugary female friendship. It’s unpredictable and raw and all the more realistic for it. Some (often financially secure adults) criticise the show for its “mopey” heroines and bleak themes: OCD, addiction, degrading sex shot from unflattering angles. That’s OK, it’s not meant for them. The show is for a young generation that’s fed up with airbrushed celebrities talking about their latest juice cleanse. Witty, moving and frank, Girls is a rollicking mix of contradictions — much like your 20s.

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Kylie on Christmas in the Minogue house
type: item
date: 2015-12-21T10:01:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: audio
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: Christmas
description: "You can’t move for fairy lights. In another life I’d have been a lighting designer – lighting makes all the difference"
encoded: You’re five feet tall – how do you get the star on top of your Christmas tree? There’s always a ladder – or you get someone to do it for you. It’s my first Christmas with a new partner [British actor Joshua Sasse, 27] and, like me, he loves Christmas. I was planning the tree this morning. What does Christmas look like in the Minogue house? You can’t move for fairy lights. In another life I’d have been a lighting designer – lighting makes all the difference. I collect vintage decorations. I’ve got some 1950s- style, delicate glass birds, which I love. They remind me of my grandma’s tree when I was little. Will you be cooking on the day? No, I’m not a chef. We’ll actually be in Europe but I’m not saying where! As long as it’s quiet and remote, I’ll be happy. Even when I’m at home, I don’t cook at Christmas. I’m in charge of atmosphere – candles, lighting the fire, table settings – and I don’t mind cleaning up after lunch. You’re happy in a pair of Marigolds? I am. I walk around stealthily removing the equipment that’s finished with and getting it washed up. What’s on your Christmas list? I’d love breakfast in bed and maybe I’ll get it this year. I’d be very happy with something simple like tea and toast. Don’t get involved with eggs, though – they’re a bit messy for bed. How else do you plan to unwind? I’ve got two weeks off and I’d like to spend it napping. I’ll watch a classic film – probably White Christmas – but only after I’ve re-watched Love Actually. And I’ll put together a playlist for when we have people round. Unashamedly, my new album Kylie Christmas will be on there, but I’ll mix it up with Bing Crosby, Doris Day and Michael Bublé. Which do you prefer – a British or Australian Christmas? I’d say an Aussie Christmas but only because my family is there and it reminds me of being a kid. Also it’s summertime so everyone’s really in the spirit of things. It cracks me up that the Brits can’t get their heads around the notion of a hot Christmas. It really is biki…

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Nick Grimshaw: My job is all about "celebrity fluff" – but the Teen Awards are different
type: item
date: 2015-11-08T10:39:01.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: The X Factor judge has a whirlwind life of celebrity friends and A-list appearances, but his latest project is where his heart really lies
encoded: Nick “Grimmy” Grimshaw is supposed to be talking about the Radio 1 Teen Awards, but there’s a problem. He’s just recorded an interview with Justin Bieber for the station’s breakfast show and the Canadian crooner has mistakenly left his phone in Grimshaw’s possession. Although he’s doing his best to eulogise about the Awards – which celebrate the achievements of everyday teenagers – Grimshaw is more than a little distracted, constantly peeling off to liaise with PAs and drivers on the best way to resolve this very A-list problem. “Justin’s at Claridge’s. Shall we drop it off for him? Then we can drop the clothes off for him as well. OK, let’s take it to mine and they can come and collect it, whatever, OK, OK. I’m SO sorry about this,” he says, turning back to me. “It’s been quite the day.” It sure has. He started the morning with Adele and the much-hyped first play of her new track Hello on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show. Then came his date with Bieber and now he’s off to rehearse for tomorrow’s X Factor live show. (Grimshaw joined the series as a judge earlier this year.) Add to that the recent launch of his capsule collection for Topman and it’s hardly surprising that there’s an air of the headless chicken about him. “I leave the house at 5am and get home at midnight. I was really ill recently and someone was like, ‘Well, we don’t have time to go to the doctor’s so…’ It’s ridiculous!” View oEmbed on the source website With Team Bieber en route to retrieve the phone, he turns to the Teen Awards, an annual ceremony honouring both the year’s best music and three “unsung heroes” – teenagers nominated by the public for their courage in the face of adversity. Among this year’s winners is Rosie, a committed fundraiser living with incurable brain cancer. “I’ve known family members with cancer and it’s all-encompassing, but Rosie has done extracurricular stuff. As a teenager with multiple inoperable tumours that’s outstanding, because I think an adult with cancer would struggle…

Myleene Klass on Singing in the Rainforest: "The islanders thanked us for giving them a voice"
type: item
date: 2015-09-14T15:00:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Documentaries
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The former pop star returns to the jungle tonight, making music with the Ulithians on the remote Pacific island of Mog
encoded: When you’re a successful classical musician used to selling out illustrious concert halls, it’s easy to become precious about the conditions necessary for top-notch performance. However Myleene Klass was forced to go back to basics for her latest project, Singing in the Rainforest, when she and record producer Nigel Wright (pictured below) arrived on the pacific island of Mog Mog (size: one-mile long, population: 200) to write and record a piece of music with its inhabitants. “When you record in a sound booth, it’s devoid of any outside noise but we had the sea, cockerels, pigs and the sound of coconuts falling on the track,” says Klass. Not that this distracted from the final result – a spine-tingling combination of indigenous chants and rippling piano chords. "The islanders thanked us for giving them a voice. The women in particular don't always have a voice. Some of them don't even know how old they are. They said we gave life back to the island because they don’t write down their history, they pass it on through song. A lot of people had never heard those chants before but now they’ve been passed on to a new generation.” You can hear an exclusive sneak peek of the track Myleene recorded with the islanders below. Singing in the Rainforest begins on Watch (Sky 109, Virgin 124 HD, Virgin 191) on Monday 14th September at 9pm View Green Video on the source website

Taylor Swift should play Glastonbury, says Edith Bowman
type: item
date: 2015-09-10T14:30:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
subject: Glastonbury
description: The best festivals never play it safe, says the former Radio 1 DJ
encoded: Kanye West, Jay Z, Beyoncé – Glastonbury is as renowned for its controversial headline acts as it is for torrential downpours. But while high-profile figures from Noel Gallager to Dizzee Rascal have, in the past, criticised the festival for veering too far from its hippie, guitar-music roots, Edith Bowman sees the unconventional line-ups as a sign that the muddy five-day extravaganza is in ruder health than ever. “I think it’s very narrow minded of people to be so judgmental about artists and who they are and what they do,” says Bowman who is appearing at the Radio Times Festival to reflect on her favourite festival moments, and grill Annie Nightingale on her stellar radio career. “That’s what festivals are about, they’re about pleasing you but also pushing your boundaries as well. Glastonbury’s done that. It’s such a snobby way to approach music to have a go at a festival for their line-up. Glastonbury has taken the brunt of that over the past few years whether it be with Kanye or Jay Z but it’s always taken risks with the people on the bill. “Also, if you think about how much attention Glastonbury got for putting Kanye on the line-up this year, it’s the best press campaign you could hope for.” So who would Bowman like to see on the festival’s hallowed Pyramid Stage next year? “I love Taylor Swift and I think she’d be amazing at Glastonbury. Some people say pop acts don’t cut it at festivals but I saw Pink at Isle of Wight five years ago and it was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. That’s how a pop performance is done. She bunjee jumped out of a crane suspended above the crowd and came out on wires over the crowd and you could hear that she was singing live the whole time. It put loads of other pop acts to shame.” With two young sons (she is married to Editors frontman Tom Smith) Bowman has less time to festival-hop these days and has learnt to be selective. “Latitude’s a great festival, Glastonbury is obviously a beast of a festival but then you have sm…

Giles Coren on taxing the fat, being an "urban food ponce" and why life wasn't better in the 1950s
type: item
date: 2015-03-17T16:41:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Documentaries
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: Reality TV
subject: TV
description: The food critic's new series Back in Time For Dinner considers what our changing meals have said about us, and society at large...
encoded: Giles Coren has a new food obsession and it’s not the high-end fare that you might expect from the man who once declared (half jokingly, half not – it’s hard to tell with Coren) that his last meal on Earth would consist of Beluga caviar followed by ortolan – a tiny, gorged songbird drowned in Armagnac, which was banned from French restaurant menus in 2007 for animal rights issues. “I’ve been eating dripping recently,” he declares plummily. “The other day, I saved the fat from the roast and the next morning, I gave it a chance to warm up and spread it on toast with a bit of salt. Absolutely delicious, pretty nutritious.” It’s an odd addition to a diet that, by his own admission, usually revolves around the best cuts of meat sourced from his local, north-London butcher – but not a completely inexplicable one. Although best known as an acid-tongued restaurant critic and columnist, Coren is in TV presenter mode this week with Back in Time for Dinner, a six-part BBC2 series-cum-social experiment that sees a modern, middle-class family rattle through 50 years of British food history in a bid to discover what our evolving diet says about us as a society. From the comfort of their own east-London kitchen, the Robshaws (dad Brandon, mum Rochelle, Miranda, 17, Ros, 15, and Fred, ten) will munch their way from 1950 to the modern day at a rate of a decade a week. Every meal is based on findings from the National Food Survey, which ran from 1940 to 1999, meticulously recording what families across the country were serving up for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Initially, the Robshaws were happy to try anything – they even agreed to have their kitchen refitted every week to reflect changing trends in decor. However, spirits dived a couple of days into the austere, rationed reality of 1950s life. “It starts off bleak, all bland and dull with clearly defined gender roles and Mum stuck in the kitchen,” says Coren. “We look back to that era and think it was better that they all ate toge…

Chris O'Dowd on Moone Boy, fatherhood and binge watching Broadchurch
type: item
date: 2015-03-02T12:20:47.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The IT Crowd star, whose Irish Sky1 comedy returns tonight, fills us in on his TV picks
encoded: He may have left these shores to live in the States, but has Irish IT Crowd star Chris O' Dowd kept his British telly roots? Let's find out... Which British TV shows do you recommend to your starry American friends? I told someone the other day they should watch Toast of London. I send links saying, “Watch this”, but LA is such an industry town, people are increasingly aware of what’s doing well in Britain. What makes you switch off? American commercials – they’re so terrible. British ads aren’t as bad. Here in the US, 90 per cent of the time it’s a man shouting, “You’ll get cancer until you buy this!” The other ten per cent is just burgers. Do you have similar tastes to your wife, Dawn O’Porter? She could probably live without Match of the Day. We’re based in LA and I see it in the afternoon – which is odd as I’m watching the highlights at a time of day when everyone else would be watching a live game. View oEmbed on the source website You’re not an American football convert then? I don’t really understand American sports, which is why I keep up with football – I feel like I have an itch to scratch. I’m a big podcast guy and when I’m walking the dog I listen to the 5 Live podcast, Sky Sports’ Sunday Supplement and an Irish one called Off the Ball. Do you have time to watch TV since becoming a dad? [Their son, Art, was born in January.] I’ve watched more TV over the past three or four months than I have in my whole life. In the last days of pregnancy you’re sitting around a lot, so I watched all of Mad Men, and The Sopranos from the start, and we watched the first series of Broadchurch in two days. O'Dowd with his wife Dawn O'Porter You’re writing a US version of Moone Boy. How does it differ? We’ve taken the basic premise – a working-class family where the kid has an imaginary friend – but we’re setting it in the Midwest, not Boyle [in rural Ireland]. I don’t know if it will work, to be honest. The tone on network television in America is so different, particularly…

The secrets of Taking New York: putting the structure in structured reality
type: item
date: 2015-02-24T10:45:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Documentaries
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: Reality TV
subject: TV
description: How was it cast? Is it scripted? Is it replacing Made in Chelsea? Educating Yorkshire producer David Clews reveals all...
encoded: Structured reality is big in Britain. The Only Way is Essex, Geordie Shore and Made in Chelsea are watched with relish (and tweeted about) by swathes of teenagers and 20-somethings. Part soap, part reality, these glossy offerings have sprung from the 2006 US show The Hills, which followed the romantic trials and tribulations of a group of rich Californian teens. David Clews, who produced the 2013 ob-doc Educating Yorkshire, is now overseeing E4's Taking New York, which follows a bunch of Brits having a brilliant (if drama-filled) time in the Big Apple. He took Radio Times behind the scenes of the structured reality world... How did you cast Taking New York? It’s a small community out there – most of the Brits gravitate towards each other so they’ll point you in the direction of different people. Everything from street casting to announcement was done on websites and social media groups and popular places where young Brits hang out and work in NY. We could work our way through the British community and meet everybody. So they had already met before the series started? Yes, some had. Jamie and Ben and Danny all live together – they’re models in NY. We didn’t realise when we were casting but the twins, Amy and Megan, had actually worked with the boys in Abercrombie and Fitch in London beforehand. There were some circles that knew each other and some that didn’t and that’s definitely part of the show – the relationships and friendships that are formed through the series. Do you think you’ve found a good enough mix to make the show Made in Chelsea-style addictive? I think they’re a great cast and that’s what you spend a long time doing in terms of casting for a series like this. You never know but people so far really like the cast and I think there’s the right mix of humour and warmth and likeability as well as characters with egos. You need that mix. Is this very sleek programming with its high production values the future of constructed reality? That’s the $6 million …

Sherlock's Mrs Hudson gets arty in The Great British Paint Off
type: item
date: 2015-02-22T10:50:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Last year Una Stubbs exhibited two watercolours of co-stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman- this year she's presenting BBC1's The Big Painting Challenge...
encoded: If the Oscars had an award for best actor supporting a paintbrush, the nominations card would be bursting with A-listers. Cumberbatch, Depp, Brosnan, Hopkins, Pfeiffer and Aniston: all have turned to artistry of an oil-on-canvas kind when they want to escape the rigours of the day job. In Hollywood terms it’s a fairly exclusive club. But if a new BBC1 series has its way, it’s a club we’ll all be able to gain entry to. Like its Bake Off, Allotment and Sewing Bee siblings, The Big Painting Challenge aims to get us off the sofa and into something creative. The Mel and Sue of this new Sunday evening series are Una Stubbs and Richard Bacon – she paints and he collects. Over the next six weeks they will accompany ten amateur artists (chosen from over 6,000 entries) as they travel the country tackling oils, watercolours, pencils, charcoals and chalks. Judges Daphne Todd and Lachlan Goudie will scrutinise their every brush stroke, eventually crowning a winner whose work will be displayed in Tate Britain. Radio Times readers can also take part in a competition using the free postcards with the most recent issue of the magazine. It’s a familiar set-up, and one that Stubbs hopes will inspire the nation to pick up a paintbrush in the same way that it has embraced homemade puddings and skirts. “It would be lovely if the series does encourage people to find enjoyment in painting and drawing. If they do take anything away from it, I hope it’s just to do it as regularly as possible.” Stubbs, who’s an elegant 77, has had a difficult relationship with painting. But it was gloriously consummated last year when she announced herself as an artist, exhibiting two watercolours of her Sherlock co-stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman at the Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition. “It was one of the best weeks of my life,” she says excitedly of the experience. “They didn’t actually sit for me, but they’ve both got such extraordinary faces they’re easy to remember.” While the portr…

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Bafta Film Awards 2015: Zoë Ball on taking to the red carpet, Strictly and her TV favourites
type: item
date: 2015-02-08T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: What connects Wolf Hall, Nick Grimshaw and Peppa Pig? A certain Strictly Come Dancing presenter...
encoded: After a year which has seen her fill in on one on BBC1's most popular shows at the very last moment, it must be almost a relief for veteran presenter Zoë Ball to return to the Bafta red carpet for another year. Before she glammed up for the awards, we had a chance to catch up with her for all the goss from previous years – and find out some of her small screen favourites as well. This is your fifth year doing the Bafta red carpet. Who have you been most starstruck by? Meryl Streep got me to hold her up because she was a bit shocked after winning her best actress award [for The Iron Lady in 2012]. Then last year I had this lovely moment when Brad Pitt turned to me at the end of the interview and said, “You did good, girl!” You have all these random little moments with your big-screen heroes. Which film are you rooting for this year? The Theory of Everything. My stepdad lost his life to motor neurone disease. Eddie Redmayne is just outstanding as Stephen Hawking. The way he portrays him as he deteriorates is uncanny. How did you feel standing in for Claudia Winkleman [following her daughter’s accident] on the Strictly live shows last year? Fear and terror, but I didn’t have much time to panic. They called me at 8am on the Saturday, I grabbed a frock and on we went. There were calls for you to become a permanent host... It’s very lovely when people say such nice things but it’s Tess and Claud’s (below) show and my show’s It Takes Two. We’re all pretty happy like that. You’re just finishing the Strictly live tour. Any wild nights out with the contestants? They’re all a bit younger than me so I haven’t been out as much as they have, but I did find myself listening to Thom Evans, Joanne Clifton, Scott Mills and Craig Revel Horwood singing Celine Dion songs until 4am, which was pretty terrifying. You used to be known as a bit of a party girl. What’s your idea of a dream Friday night? Staying in, watching BBC4 music documentaries. It’s the new going out! They did a brillian…

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The Great British Sewing Bee's Patrick Grant says "sewing isn't girly"
type: item
date: 2015-02-05T16:50:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Savile Row tailor talks about his seamless transition to dapper TV judge
encoded: You may think The Great British Sewing Bee is a cosy, family show aimed at a core-audience of middle-aged women with a make-and-mend mentality and a passion for cushion covers. But Patrick Grant, the dashingly dapper and very successful menswear designer who judges the contestants’ creations, along with the WI’s May Martin, begs to differ. “I think the stereotype of sewing is disappearing,” he explains, as he reclines in a leather armchair, dressed immaculately in wide-leg, rolled-up jeans and a navy jumper. “It’s very intricate and quite a manly thing to do. It’s kind of like Meccano and Lego. It’s making stuff.” While Savile Row has long been a male domain – “Back in the day the tools for tailoring were incredibly heavy and it was always men who did it,” says Grant – domestic sewing, whether as a hobby or through necessity, is usually considered a women’s game. However, Grant is convinced that Sewing Bee’s influence is eroding this gender split. To confirm his theory, after two years of all-female finals, this year’s show has a record number of male contestants. “We’re 40 per cent men this time – six women and four guys – and two of the guys have been in the Army! They’re blokey. Perhaps they might not have wanted to raise their heads above the parapet when we first started, but I hope that we’ve shown that there’s nothing girly about making clothes.” This is hardly a surprising opinion given Grant’s unconventional route into tailoring. Although he was “obsessive” about clothes as a boy, with weekends spent rummaging through Edinburgh’s charity shops, he never contem- plated life as a designer, enrolling at Leeds University to study engineering. “I studied materials science and engineering and that’s basically the discipline of how you put things together. You design something, you select the material, you work out how to join those things together and finish them. It doesn’t really matter at that point whether you’re making the brake for a high-speed train or a p…

Catastrophe's Sharon Horgan: I've mined my life for comedy
type: item
date: 2015-01-19T15:43:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
subject: Channel 4
description: “We started looking at our own lives and the genesis of our relationships and we thought it might be nice to see the beginning"
encoded: Sharon Horgan’s comedy has always had a darkly realistic edge. Her best-known show to date, BBC3 sitcom Pulling, chronicled the chaotic lives of three 30-something women with a penchant for cheap wine and disastrous flings. At the time, Horgan described her character Donna as “an incredibly selfish character... which is sort of based on me”. Nine years later and Horgan is drawing on her own experiences yet again, this time for the C4 sitcom Catastrophe, which follows an Irish woman (Horgan) who falls pregnant after a one-night stand with an American (played by Rob Delaney) she meets in a bar. The pair wrote the show together and while they insist their characters’ exact (and very awkward) predicament is fictional, the couple’s bungled attempts at a relationship are very much inspired by real life. “The original idea was two people in a relationship, with a family, who are doing everything they can not to get divorced,” explains Horgan. “But then we started looking at our own lives and the genesis of our relationships and we thought it might be nice to see the beginning. How quite often they come out of drunken shenanigans and there’s no basis for anything that involves living together for decades.” Now happily married to advertising executive Jeremy Rainbird with two daughters, Sadhbh (11) and Amer (six), Horgan’s lifestyle has changed dramatically since her Pulling days but, she insists, that doesn’t make it any less ripe for comedy. View oEmbed on the source website “Catastrophe is probably the most similar thing that I’ve done to Pulling because it’s the thing that I’ve mined my life for. Pulling was a time of my life when I had nothing. I hung out with brats and drank a lot and had loose, unsatisfying relationships so this is quite different but equally satisfying to write about. Even when you get yourself together, it doesn’t mean everything’s OK. It’s the same old thing just with a mortgage and responsibility.” It’s not just Horgan who has evolved over the pas…

Psychobitches: Michelle Gomez and Rebecca Front's comedy heroes… and Margaret Thatcher
type: item
date: 2014-11-25T17:40:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Who inspired the cast of the offbeat Sky Arts comedy?
encoded: Comedy isn’t easy, especially for women in a male-dominated market – but Sky Arts series Psychobitches has bucked the trend by giving the fairer sex the spotlight. Now, these funny ladies are undoubtably an inspiration to other comedy performers – but who were the women who inspired them? Rebecca Front Acting royalty There’s still a feeling that women are lesser beings in comedy but you only have to look at someone like Victoria Wood to realise that it’s completely unjustified. She was a huge influence on me because she’s an eminently funny woman with an incredible ability for observation. Funny men And I’ve always admired Judi Dench. These days we think of her as one of our great classical actresses but she did the sitcom A Fine Romance in the 1980s so has straddled the divide between comedy and serious acting. But the best thing about these women is that their gender is irrelevant. They are just brilliantly funny people. The same goes for Psychobitches. It’s not a women’s comedy, it’s a comedy where the majority of the characters just happen to be played by women. At the beginning of my career I did predominantly work with men but I was lucky in that they were very feminist. On The Thick Of It, Armando Iannucci would say, “Can you stay behind and work on this script with us? We want to hear your input.” That was really encouraging and if I was to give advice to young women in comedy today I’d say, “You will very often be in a room full of men and you have to be prepared to speak as loudly as them and realise that your voice is just as valid as anyone else’s.” Ordinary people Women sometimes tell me that I made them want to do comedy and that’s fantastic, but it’s probably not healthy to start thinking of yourself as a role model. When my book, Curious, came out earlier this year, people kept saying how brave I’d been to write about mental health. I’ve had everyone from 16-year-old girls to 71-year- old men share their experiences of phobias and panic attacks with …

Nick Hornby: "Novels should be like TV"
type: item
date: 2014-10-05T11:50:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Books
subject: Comedy
subject: Drama
subject: Going Out
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: The About A Boy author on his new novel, why kids shouldn't have to read Ulysses, and how Julia Roberts and Sean Penn nearly starred in a remake of How To Be Good
encoded: Nick Hornby may be one if the country's best selling authors but he has no time for literary snobbery. "My real campaign is to get everybody to read something that they're loving," said the author whilst speaking at Cheltenham Literature Festival to promote his new book Funny Girl. "If they're not loving it then stop reading it. Every time we pick up a book from a sense of duty and we find that we're struggling to get through it we reinforce the notion that reading is something we should do but telly is something that we want to do. It shouldn't be like that. Novels should be like TV. And it doesn't mean you have to read easy books." Hornby argued that children shouldn't be forced to persevere with a book simply because it's considered a classic. "When you see the poet laureate saying that every child should have read Ulysses and that you're just giving up on children if you think it's elitist- does that include children with special needs or whose first language isn't English?" In 2006, the then poet laureate Andrew Motion said that children should be expected to read Don Quixote, Ulysses, The Waste Land and Paradise Lost before leaving school. Hornby said this was missing the point of children's literacy: "If you can get every kid to have found a book that he or she loves then you've done a great job." Speaking about his own work, Hornby said his forthcoming 1960s-set novel Funny Girl, which will be out in November, was about the "birth, life and death" of a television series. Asked why his successful 2001 novel How To Be Good was one of the few of his works to not be adapted for the screen, he revealed that Julia Roberts and Sean Penn had been set to take star in a film of the book but that the project had fallen through. "There was a moment- I would say five years ago- where I had a phone call from Mike Nichols who was sitting in a rehearsal studio with Julia Roberts and Sean Penn and they were all ready to go. That was the last I ever heard of it. It was bought…

Sarah Beeny: "I’m a massive Prince Charles fan"
type: item
date: 2014-09-24T11:04:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Entertainment
subject: TV
description: The property guru talks housing tips, voiceovers and how she doesn't care if people tune in for her boobs
encoded: Is it true that you were spotted to be on TV at a hen party? Yes! Someone asked me what I did for a living and I said that I had a property company. Then I got a call asking if I wanted to go for a screen test for Channel 4’s Property Ladder. Are friends always asking for your opinion on their homes? I’ve been asked random questions like should I paint the kitchen yellow or blue, but a lot of the time it’s about how to make space work well. People also want to understand the building process and the financial side of things. With so many property programmes on TV, how do you make sure viewers don’t get bored? You need a combination of luck, a great team and creative ideas. I’ve got a series coming up later this autumn called Clicks and Mortar about selling your house with an online estate agent. It’s an emerging sector, which is really exciting because normally television follows the market, but we’re covering something really current. What are you watching at the moment? I rarely watch television, but I do enjoy Mock the Week. I like really good history documentaries as well. People’s social history fascinates me, which is maybe why I’ve always been in property. Who controls the remote? My husband [Graham Swift, an artist and business partner]. We have an appointment to view on Friday when we sit down with the boys [Billy, ten; Charlie, 8; Rafferty, 6; and Laurie, 4] and watch a film. The last one was Marvel’s Avengers – it was fantastic. Do you listen to the radio? I love The News Quiz on Radio 4 with Sandi Toksvig, but other than that there’s so much noise in our house already. We all try to play the piano, but no one’s good enough. Who do you admire? I’m a massive Prince Charles fan. He was talking about saving the planet 40 years ago – before anyone knew the word “green” – and he has this amazing regeneration trust, which takes important buildings and finds new uses for them. I don’t know why people are so mean about him. Government policy should be based on wh…

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Nicola Adams: Pioneering female boxing champion to take Commonwealth Games by storm
type: item
date: 2014-07-27T05:00:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Boxing
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: The first female gold medalist in Olympic boxing on how she achieved world titles in a relatively male-dominated sport, as well as confidence in her sexuality
encoded: There’s a palpable sense of focus in the Team GB boxing gym. With less than a month to go until the Glasgow Games, the squad has cranked up its training to 12-hour days that include a 7am run and meticulously timetabled skipping, core-strength and punching sessions. Although the athletes will splinter off into their home nation teams when the competition begins, they are, for the time being, very much the tightly-knit GB unit that fought its way to five medals at London 2012, egging each other on and chatting animatedly between bouts. At 3pm on the dot, a claxon heralds the start of the speed-punch round. The Sheffield Sports Hall reverberates with the rhythmic smack of gloves on pads and the guttural grunts of sweat-drenched male boxers. An army of coaches, physios and performance analysts hovers in the background, forensically picking over every jab and duck. “This week, next week, you’ve got to GRAFT,” bellows one. “Win that gold!” A slender figure watches the action, wrapping long, black tape around her hands before slipping into the ring. For the next two minutes the five-foot six-inch figure of Nicola Adams silently, but ferociously throws arrow-sharp punches at her sparring partner. She may be the smallest – and quietest – boxer in the room, but Adams, 31, is the biggest star. The first woman ever to win an Olympic boxing gold medal, she stormed into the nation’s hearts at London 2012, toppling China’s three-time world champion Ren Cancan to win the flyweight final with a thunderbolt left hook and a mega-watt smile. Does she ever feel that her chirpy, unassuming nature is at odds with such a boisterous and historically male-dominated sport? “The women don’t focus as much on power and knockouts as the men do,” she explains during a break from training. “It’s probably just a question of testosterone. We’re more calculated... It’s just a game to me. It’s like a game of tag. You’re trying not to get hit.” Despite this, Adams prefers to spar with the men. “They’re…

Meet the new generation of home nation sporting stars
type: item
date: 2014-07-26T05:30:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Athletics
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: Remember the names Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Eilidh Child, Michael Conlan and Aled Davies
encoded: Katarina Johnson-Thompson Country: England Sport: Heptathlon Watch her: The heptathlon is on BBC1, starting on Tuesday at 10:30am and concluding on Wednesday at 8:05pm Chatterbox, friendly, determined, crazy, generous, scatty. They are all words used to describe Katarina Johnson-Thompson – by herself. Seasoned observers in athletics prefer superlatives, rating her as one of the brightest young talents in the world of sport. Johnson-Thompson, at 21, will start favourite for gold in the heptathlon at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and appears to be emboldened rather than burdened by the label “the new Jessica Ennis”. The Liverpudlian’s performances so far this season rank her alongside the greatest ever at the same age and there is genuine excitement within British athletics that she could emulate Ennis-Hill (as the Olympic champion is now know), Denise Lewis, Mary Peters and Daley Thompson in winning multi-events gold at the Olympics, maybe even in Rio in 2016. Lewis, who lifted the Olympic title in Sydney in 2000 and is now part of the BBC commentary team, has been impressed by the rate of Johnson-Thompson’s development: “I didn’t expect her to progress so quickly. With heptathletes, you don’t know when there is going to be that leap forward. I expected this to be a consolidating year. But she’s ripped up that form and said, ‘You know what, I’m on a train and I’m going places.’” The heptathlon comprises seven disciplines spread over two days of competition and is the ultimate test of all-round ability. One weak event is one too many. The “leap forward” for Johnson-Thompson came at a recent competition in the Austrian town of Gotzis, a hallowed venue in heptathlon history. Johnson-Thompson won with the highest points total achieved by any athlete since Ennis- Hill won gold at London 2012. “They’d made a big deal of it,” says Johnson-Thompson. “It was the 40th anniversary of the event and as you walked into the stadium, on the floor, like the Hollywood stars, you s…

Wimbledon 2014: Virginia Wade on the women to watch
type: item
date: 2014-06-23T11:58:14.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: The women's singles is wide open, says former champ Virginia Wade - but these five will be in the mix
encoded: When it comes to choosing a women's champ, it seems there's one clear favourite. But these four ladies will give Ms Williams stiff competition, says Virginia Wade... Garbiñe Muguruza Best Wimbledon: Second round 2013 If I had to bet on anyone to beat Serena Williams it would be Muguruza. We saw her do it at Roland Garros and she has such a big serve that I don’t see why she couldn’t do it again on grass. She was knocked out in the second round of last year’s Wimbledon, but she played well and her big shots have progressed since then. Having made the fourth round of the Australian Open, she seems to be on a bit of a roll. It’s exciting to see a new player like her breaking through. Li Na Best Wimbledon: Quarter-finalist 2006, 2010, 2013 Li Na had an awful French Open. Some of that may be down to her having won the Australian Open in January. A big victory like that puts on a lot of extra pressure going into the next Grand Slam and I’m not sure she adjusted as well as she might have done. On the plus side, losing early in the French Open can be a good thing in terms of Wimbledon as it gives you more time to redress where you went wrong. I’m sure she’ll get her act together. Serena Williams Best Wimbledon: Champion 2002, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012 Nobody can beat Williams if she’s playing her best tennis. She’s been on excellent form this year, winning in Rome last month and Miami before that. The French Open did not go to plan. She played a terrible match in the second round, crashing out in straight sets to 35th seed Garbiñe Muguruza. However, that’s no reason to doubt her for the rest of the season — she’s still the favourite. Eugénie Bouchard Best Wimbledon: Third round 2013 The striking thing about the French Open this year was the emergence of some excellent young players Bouchard is probably the best of the lot, displaying great matchplay before losing to Sharapova in the semis. Bouchard’s concentration is fantastic and I’ve never seen her fall apart under pressure.…

Wimbledon 2014: Tim Henman on the men to watch
type: item
date: 2014-06-23T10:54:51.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: Can Andy Murray win back-to-back titles? The former British hope looks at the men he'll have to beat…
encoded: Andy Murray is back at Wimbledon to defend his Men’s Singles Champion title. Player and pundit Tim Henman talks us through the players Murray will have to beat to bring the trophy home a second time… Rafael Nadal Best Wimbledon: Champion 2008, 2010 He’s number one in the world and was in great form to win at the French Open. Can he go on to victory at Wimbledon? It’s difficult – no one expected Nadal to go out in the first round last year. You only get a fortnight to recover and that’s why it’s great that from next year Wimbledon will start a week later. You absolutely cannot write off Nadal, he’s a serious contender. I’d be very surprised if this year’s winner was not Nadal, Djokovic, Federer or Murray. Roger Federer Best Wimbledon: Champion 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 A lot of people might write him off but I think this is Federer’s chance. He played well at the Australian Open, losing in the semis to Nadal. In April he made it to the final of the Monte Carlo Masters. Grass is the toughest surface to defend on and that affects a lot of the top players – but not Federer, because his game is so attacking. Novak Djokovic Best Wimbledon: Champion 2011 Djokovic has been playing fantastically well this year and is ranked number two. He was particularly strong at the Rome Masters, beating Nadal to win. Of course, he then lost to him in the final of the French but he’s a proven winner on grass and I think he has to go into Wimbledon as the one to beat. He’s an incredible athlete with a very solid all-round game. Grigor Dimitrov Best Wimbledon: Secound round 2011, 20112, 2013 He’s not such a big name but he’s really improved in recent months. He lost to Ivo Karlovic in the first round of the French open, but that isn’t a reflection of how strong he is at the moment. He started the year ranked 23 and is now 13. It’s a massive climb and if he’s on form, he could do really well at Wimbledon. Andy Murray Best Wimbledon: Champion 2013 2014 has been difficult for Mu…

William Boyd and PD James on bringing Bond to life and adopting Mr Darcy
type: item
date: 2014-03-29T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Books
subject: Going Out
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: Six writers reveal what it’s like to live, love – and lose – their favourite characters
encoded: Bringing Bond to life - William Boyd Inheriting the character [for his 2013 James Bond novel, Solo] wasn’t a restrictive process for me. I’ve adapted a lot of famous books for film and television so I’m used to taking an existing character and creating a new narrative for them. I made a point of not thinking about the movies at all. I stuck to the literary Bond, who is in some ways a far more nuanced and complex character than anything portrayed on screen. Fleming describes Bond in great detail in the novels and on three occasions he says James Bond looks like the American singer Hoagy Carmichael. My father was a great fan of Carmichael so I happen to know exactly what he looks like. He’s a tall man with very straight dark hair, so you can get a very clear idea of what Bond looked like from looking at Hoagy Carmichael and that’s what I kept in mind while writing my novel. How to adopt Darcy - PD James The idea for Death Comes to Pemberley [her Pride and Prejudice sequel published in 2011] came from a desire to combine my two great enthusiasms in life – the novels of Jane Austen and writing detective fiction. I made up my mind that Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy as characters would not change. They are Jane Austen’s characters, not mine. Although I’ve read Pride and Prejudice many times, there were parts of the plot that left me a little confused. I felt that if the spirit of Jane Austen was present, I’d have questions to ask her. Why does Darcy, a compassionate man and a good brother, take his vulnerable 15-year-old sister from her boarding school and place her in the sole charge of Mrs Young, for example? And I’d question his first proposal to Elizabeth. Quite brutally, he says, “I know that I’m degrading myself by marrying you. I know that your mother is vulgar and that I shall be disgraced in the eyes of all my friends.” Looking at that I’d say, “Miss Austen, Darcy was a gentleman and no gentleman of this age or any other age would propose to the woman he loves wi…

Claudia Winkleman on The Great British Sewing Bee: “I fell in love several times filming the series”
type: item
date: 2014-02-18T10:45:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: Entertainment
subject: Talent Shows
subject: TV
description: “The contestants aren’t people who want to be on TV and there isn’t any fake tension," says the host of the BBC2 sewing series
encoded: Claudia Winkleman bustles into the needlework studio at Hampton Court Palace nestled in a snug grey coat, thick wool scarf and fingerless mittens. She’s not wearing a hat but there isn’t much point. That oversized fringe provides adequate insulation. It’s a chilly January morning and Winkleman has been up since 6:45am with her three children and the family’s new kitten, (“I was so tired this morning I almost cooked her”). Filming of the second series of The Great British Sewing Bee is underway and this means long days (sometimes 15 hours) spent at the programme’s Thameside warehouse studio. It’s a tiring regime but one that Winkleman feels is a crucial part of her role as presenter. “They [the team] always said, ‘you don’t have to be there the whole time,’ but you do because otherwise you miss something. And why should the contestants be there the whole time when I’m swanning in on a sedan chair? That sounds a bit J.LO.” Sewing Bee replicates the Bake Off format (the two shows are made by the same team) with ten amateur sewers competing in rounds of increasingly difficult challenges, ranging from alterations to more complex couture techniques. The Judges, May Martin from the WI and Savile Row tailor Patrick Grant, offer honest advice with a constructive warmth that gives the programme its cosy, nurturing feel. The contestants are similarly un-starry. There isn’t a sob story or diva strop in sight. “I fell in love several times filming this series,” says Winkleman matter-of-factly. “The contestants aren’t people who want to be on TV and there isn’t any fake tension…They go from ages 24 to 70 and they’re from different walks of life all over Britain. They just want to sew the best they can.” Winkleman, on the other hand, claims to be a complete clutz with a needle and thread. Sewing wasn’t taught at her school, (the prestigious City of London School for Girls) but even if it was, she would have been too busy “flirting” with boys or “eating cheese toasties” to notice. …

Australian Open: Andy Murray is "the man to beat"
type: item
date: 2014-01-11T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Ellie Austin
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: It’s a tennis war out there in 2014, says John Lloyd
encoded: Few of us know Andy Murray personally. Even fewer can claim to have any understanding of how it feels to shoulder the nation’s frenzied expectations when Wimbledon rolls around each year. But former British number one John Lloyd is a rare exception on both counts. Appointed captain of the British Davis Cup team in 2006, he worked closely with Murray as a young player. However, the pair later fell out when, after an embarrassing defeat to Lithuania (a fixture Murray chose to miss) Lloyd resigned, criticising the Scot for not showing enough commitment to the national side. But now, three years on, the rift has healed and Lloyd is a vocal supporter of Murray, who he describes as “the man to beat” at this year’s Wimbledon. He isn’t the only one to have done an about-turn. As Murray himself confessed in his Sports Personality of the Year acceptance speech last month, he “isn’t always the easiest person to support”. However, with two grand slam titles and a more relaxed manner developing both on and off court, he has finally won over the British public – and their backing will be crucial in propelling him to victory in 2014. “I wasn’t in Andy’s league but I didn’t like playing Wimbledon singles because of the expectation,” says Lloyd. “He’s a megastar in Britain but he seems to relish it now. I think he’ll look forward to returning this year. You look across the net at Andy now and you see a man in his prime. He’s a human dynamo.” Whether Murray will be winning at this month’s Australian Open – his first major tournament since undergoing back surgery in September – is a different matter. A three-time finalist in Melbourne, Murray spent the months before Christmas locked in his Miami training camp, even choosing not to travel to England to receive his SPOTY award. “I was a bit disappointed he didn’t go but it was a decision made by him and his camp. If he goes out and is OK at the Australian Open then it was justified. I’ve heard that he’s working harder than ever – there’…