When Radio Times came to tea with Judith Kerr
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
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 been for the cover I might be at the end of it already! This isn’t the first illustration you’ve done for Radio Times, is it? No! When I was at art school in London in the 1940s I drew a racehorse for Radio Times. We all wanted to do illustrations for RT because it was professional stuff. I didn’t know what racehorses looked like so I drew one grinning. I’d never been asked to do anything else... until now! It’s terribly flattering.
Is Silent Witness realistic? 5 tips to spot the fact from fiction
Silent Witness's forensic pathology advisor Dr Stuart Hamilton explains how he keeps TV crime scenes accurate – and what the show gets wrong
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 I’ll get a call saying, 'Right, are you ready to come to court?' "In the show, the pathologists are much more intimately involved but again, you have to accept that it’s drama not documentary."
Nick Robinson on Today, troubles with his voice, and the EU referendum
Since undergoing surgery and chemotherapy for lung cancer, Robinson's voice will never be what it once was
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 but I know that, away from the track, I’m doing special exercises and being careful. Has the EU referendum campaign been as confusing to report as it has been to watch? I don’t think that we will look back and think that we had a healthy debate of the issues. The politicians know that most people don’t care much about Europe, so they’ve tried to hook a series of things that we do care about – like the NHS – onto Europe, often in a deeply misleading way. I think most people have found the campaign a deeply demoralising experience. Is it tempting to let your appearance slide now that you’re on radio more than TV? I swore to myself that I would stay smart to present the Today programme, but I’m really embarrassed to say that I haven’t kept my word. I knew I didn’t have to wear a tie any more, but I started off putting on a white shirt. Then after a few weeks of getting up at 3.30am you think, “That cosy denim shirt looks really appealing,” and just chuck on chinos and boots. The Big Decision with Nick Robinson is on Friday at 7:30pm on BBC1
Why Spanish thriller Locked Up could be the new Orange is the New Black
Need a break from Scandi noir? Channel 4's new thriller could be the next great Euro drama
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 second series before the first had reached its mid-point. Critics were equally enraptured, comparing it with The Wire. “Locked Up is a towering series,” wrote one national newspaper. “Spanish drama will never be the same again,” declared another. But what makes the show such a gamechanger? “This time there was a conscious decision to make the look and rhythm of the series very international,” says Pina. “The main plot is broken up by the characters talking to camera for a documentary that is being made on prison life, which gives it a really modern feel. And it’s shot more like a film than TV. The music is different, it’s darker.” Walter Iuzzolino is the man in charge of selecting the content for Walter Presents, Channel 4’s free, online streaming service for foreign drama. On average, he watches eight hours of subtitled drama per day, picking the best to upload as box sets. Only series that he considers to be exceptional make the jump from online to a slot on the main channel. Cold War thriller Deutschland 83 was the first. Locked Up is the second. “I was really struggling to find a brilliant Spanish piece,” says Iuzzolino. “A lot of the shows I’d seen were too gentle and slow and dealt with obvious themes. But when I saw the first episode of Locked Up, I instantly loved it. It’s very shiny and feels American – you could imagine it being made by HBO – but at the same time it’s got the darkness of a Scandi noir. And it really cracked the stereotype by having this action-movie quality and putting women at the centre of it.” Did the creators ever consider setting the series in a male prison? “It wouldn’t have been as interesting,” is Pina’s response. “In Spain about 60 per cent of women watch TV drama compared with 40 per cent of men, but the stories are rarely told from a female perspective. Locked Up appeals to both genders. Women are interested in the assorted characters and how they develop, while for the men, the fascination is, ‘How do a group of women behave when we’re taken out of the picture?’ It’s also allowed us to bring new ideas to Spanish drama – the lesbian love triangle, for instance.” You could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that Locked Up is simply a raunchier, European remake of the hit Netflix prison drama Orange Is the New Black. However, by the end of its first episode, Locked Up establishes itself as a very different beast from its American sister. Both take as their starting point the bleak, volatile reality of incarceration and star a diverse female cast, but whereas Orange is a comedy of manners based around daily prison life, Locked Up is a complex, fast-paced thriller grappling with questions of morality and betrayal. “I was initially scared to watch Orange Is the New Black,” says Maggie Civantos, who plays Macarena. “But once I started, I thought, wow, this is great, but it’s completely different to what we’re doing. Our tone is much darker and there’s more violence.” Civantos was relatively unknown before being cast as Macarena. Luckily for her, however, the creators of Locked Up were determined not to hire big names. “What really stands out about the series is how none of the cast are well known,” says Iván Escobar, who co-wrote the show with Pina and two others. “We wanted viewers to believe they were watching goings-on in a prison and not be distracted by the fact they’d seen the actresses in six series before.” Neither the creators nor the cast can quite believe that Locked Up is going to be shown on British television. “I see English actors as the best,” enthuses Civantos, “so I’m so excited by this.” “For us, the UK makes some of the best drama in the world,” adds Escobar. “I watch everything you make – Black Mirror, Catastrophe – but the best is Happy Valley. I’m amazed that our series is going to be broadcast in Britain. But so proud.” Locked Up's first episode airs on Channel 4 tonight (Tuesday 17th May) at 10.00pm, after which point the entire series will be available exclusively on All4
Top tips for designing a Radio Times cover fit for a Queen
Illustrator Nina Cosford gives advice on how to win our competition to design a magazine cover for Queen Elizabeth's 90th birthday
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 works for you.” Growing up in Surrey, she was rarely without a sketchpad. “I always knew I could draw but I didn’t think I had a special talent. I’d copy things for hours. I actually used to draw Radio Times covers when I was about ten – I remember obsessing over getting Clint Eastwood completely accurate. We had a computer but couldn’t afford a printer so I always copied lettering, whereas most people printed stuff out.” At 18, Cosford enrolled at art school, where she suffered a confidence crisis that almost saw her abandon illustration for good. “I’d lost faith in drawing and wasn’t having fun with it. Then halfway through my course I had a breakthrough. I realised that good art didn’t have to be completely representative of your subject matter. It’s OK to focus on capturing someone’s character rather than obsessing over every detail of their face. I decided to draw more intuitively.” It paid off. Within weeks of graduating Cosford had a contract with Walker Books to illustrate a series of pop-up books on European cities and landmarks. She has since co-created an illustrated series of biographies called Life Portraits, which recount the lives of influential women such as Frida Kahlo and Virginia Woolf. The Radio Times cover is not, however, her first foray into the world of television. After becoming hooked on Girls, Lena Dunham’s dramedy about a quartet of complicated, largely directionless young women living in New York, Cosford began sketching key moments from the series, captioned with lines of Dunham’s dialogue. Dunham saw the illustrations on Cosford’s blog and was so impressed that she immediately got in touch asking her to produce official Girls artwork. “That was a massive turning point for me. I’d always loved drawing buildings, but Girls made me realise that I also enjoy drawing the mundane moments of everyday life. I love work that captures the joy and humour of a moment.” HOW TO ENTER: You can simply use a blank sheet of A4 paper or download a template from our website radiotimes.com/ queencover. All we ask is that you leave room for the masthead (the Radio Times lettering at the top) and your design is in portrait format. When you’re happy with your design, send it to the address below, or email it to queencover@radiotimes.com If you’re posting your entry, make sure you write your name, age, address and phone number on a piece of paper and attach it firmly to the back of your entry. If you’re under 16, you’ll need your parent or guardian to sign this piece of paper for us to accept your entry. The address to post your entry to is: Radio Times Queen at 90 Competition, Immediate Media Company, Vineyard House, 44 Brook Green, London W6 7BT Whether you post or email your entry, it must reach us by 11:59pm on Friday 6 May 2016. TERMS AND CONDITIONS • The Promoter is Immediate Media Company London Limited, Vineyard House, 44 Brook Green, Hammersmith, London, W6 7BT. • You can enter if you live in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland or the Channel Islands, except if you are closely related to an Immediate Media staff member or anyone involved in this competition. • There are three age bandings: eight years old and younger; nine to 12 years old; and 13 to 18 years old. You must be within one of these three bandings as of 6 May 2016. • Age and residency requirements must be met on the closing date for submissions. Immediate Media reserves the right to request proof of age for entrants as well as parent’s or guardian’s consent. • You must only enter this competition once. We don’t allow bulk entries or entries made on your behalf. • All entries will be judged on the following criteria: Creative — the design must be striking and original. Usable — the design must be appropriate for RT’s front cover. Relevant — the design celebrates the Queen’s 90th birthday. • By entering this competition, you agree that you’ve read these rules and will follow them. • The competition closes at 11.59pm on Friday 6 May 2016. If you win, you’ll receive the prize as described. Winners will be judged by an independent panel appointed by Radio Times. • We can’t include entries that arrive late and we can’t accept responsibility if your entry is lost in the post. If your entry is damaged before it reaches us, we may not be able to include it in the competition. • Winners will be notified within 14 days of the competition closing date, either by post, telephone or email. If a winner cannot be reached, or does not reply within seven days, we may have to offer the prize to a runner-up. • There is no cash alternative and the prize is not transferable. We reserve the right to substitute the prize with one of the same or greater value. • The name and county of residence of the winner(s) will be available by sending an SAE to: Competition Rules, Radio Times Reader Services, Immediate Media Company, Vineyard House , 44 Brook Green, Hammersmith, London W6 7BT within two months of the closing date of the promotion. • Artwork will not be returned. Should your entry be selected, you will own the copyright in your design but you grant us, and all of the companies in our group, a free and unlimited licence to use, edit and reproduce your entry in any of our publications and marketing materials, including but not limited to our magazines, digital magazines, websites and email newsletters.
Emma Bunton on a Spice Girls reunion and dancing around the kitchen to Wannabe
"[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"
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 brilliant, although I’m a bit biased as she’s a good friend. Is this your pitch to be on ITV’s This Morning? I love This Morning, but I’m busy enough at the moment! I’m doing the radio show, then it’s the school pick-up and now I’m doing Too Much TV live in the evenings. Acting is actually the thing I’d like to do more of. Have you got your eye on a particular drama? Before the Spice Girls I was in EastEnders and The Bill and I’ve done a few Harold Pinter plays. I also have a cameo in Absolutely Fabulous: the Movie [to be released later this year].
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"
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
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 through. Mary Beard is also presenting Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed on BBC2 this week “I want to be clear that I don’t have a moral objection to people dyeing their hair. If people want to colour their hair for fun - great, but it’s that feeling that somehow I can’t go out of the house unless I don’t look like this old lady. It goes back to well-mown issues where the white-haired craggy male talking about politics on telly is fine, whereas the wrinkled, white-haired lady isn’t. With men, the signals of ageing suggest authority but with women they don’t. Some women buck that trend. Shirley Williams, Mary Warnock and Diana Athill all have grey hair and still come across as decisive in that very male way but most women in the public eye don’t feel comfortable doing that.” Is it because women feel that their power – whether it be as an employee, friend or wife – is inextricably linked to their sexual attractiveness? “Yes, some people would think about it biologically and say post-menopausal women have lost their biological function. Then there’s the grim reaper. When you’re 61 you’re closer to the grim reaper than when you’re 41 and there’s a sense of fear in acknowledging that.” When it comes to appearance, it seems that women in the public eye can’t win. Dare to appear on TV with greying hair and wrinkles and you’re considered decrepit; spend too much time on your hair and make-up and you risk being hired as a pretty face rather than for your expertise. Is it more difficult for female broadcasters and academics to be taken seriously if they’re conventionally attractive? “I think that some women would say so. I know some who think that they’ve been invited to a conference because they look glam. I think they’re wrong and I think there are a lot of women putting themselves down in all of this. ‘I worry what will happen if I go grey’ versus ‘I’m only getting these gigs because I’m a young woman who looks conventionally attractive.’ We used to think we could blame men for making women feel they had to look a certain way but it’s more complicated than that. We’re all implicated.” The biggest revelation in the documentary says Beard is the number of men reaching for the dye bottle. “I hadn’t realised quite how many men colour their hair but don’t talk about it. We meet one man who says, ‘I want to look younger. I don’t care if that’s vain – I like colouring my hair. I like the reaction to me as a person that comes from looking younger.” Ironically, “granny hair” is currently having a moment in high fashion/ celebrity circles. Rihanna, Cara Delevigne and Zayn Malik have all experimented with grey dye jobs in recent months while at Paris Fashion Week last September, Jean Paul Gaultier’s models sported backcombed silver beehives. What does Beard make of this reappropriation? “There are funny stories of irony in all of this but essentially it’s about being comfortable in your own skin. It’s always puzzled me that when I’m 61 it’s supposed to be a compliment when someone says, ‘you don’t look a day over 50’. Why would I not want to look like what I am which is a grey-haired woman of 61? I know TV is a fickle movement and one day I won’t get asked to do another programme but I’ll shrug my shoulders and that will be it. My day job is as an academic and I can sit in the library with my grey hair until I’m 102 and no one will ever bat an eyelid.” Glad to Be Grey is on BBC Radio 4 this Friday 4 March at 11am. Mary Beard's new TV series Pompeii: New Secrets airs on BBC2 this Thursday 3 March at 9pm on BBC2. Radio Times Travel offer 8-day escorted tour of Pompeii, Capri and the Bay of Naples from £799pp The Sorrento peninsula and the Bay of Napleshas attracted visitors for centuries in search of its outstanding scenery, tranquility and some of the most remarkable sights from throughout history. Click here for more details.
Sorry, but this is what girls in their 20s are like
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.
"You can’t move for fairy lights. In another life I’d have been a lighting designer – lighting makes all the difference"
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 bikinis, board shorts and BBQs. No Christmas jumper? No, but I’ve got one for the first time this year. I had it made specially. It has the Alps stitched along the bottom hem and snowflakes along the top. Will you call your parents in Melbourne on Christmas Day? They’re actually coming to London in the run-up to Christmas to watch me sing at the Royal Albert Hall and I’m wondering if I can persuade them to stay. If not, yes, I’ll be spending a lot of time on Skype and FaceTime. What are your hopes for 2016? There’s a sobering feel to this Christmas so it would be to watch the news and see something more hopeful. Personally, I’d like to work a little less and live a little more. I had intended to have an Eat, Pray, Love year with travel and time out, but then I met Josh. Maybe we could do it together. Christmas with Kylie is on Christmas Day, 2pm Radio 2. She’s John Bishop’s guest, Monday 21 December, 9pm BBC1
Nick Grimshaw: My job is all about "celebrity fluff" – but the Teen Awards are different
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
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 to do anything.” Grimshaw will host the ceremony from Wembley Arena but insists it isn’t just another presenting gig. “The Teen Awards are one of the reasons I wanted to work at Radio 1. It has a conscience and a social message rather than just getting you to press ‘play’ on songs. A lot of the time in my job you’re hearing celebrity fluff, and I think teenagers get a bad press, so it’s nice to hear from real people who are doing incredible things. We’ve picked stories that are important topics for families to talk about at the kitchen table.” Grimshaw is a firm believer in the power of conversation to break taboos. As a boy, growing up in Oldham, he knew he was gay from an early age and talks with refreshing nonchalance about his sexuality. “I never felt as an adult that I even had to come out. I only feel like you’re coming out if you’ve been married, or pretended you were straight… I never had any false thoughts in my brain. I didn’t have three kids and then go, ‘Guess what guys?’ There were no bulletins to be delivered because it was all I ever knew.” View oEmbed on the source website In his rare time off, Grimshaw is frequently snapped leaving London’s most exclusive nightspots with a gang of A-list friends that includes Kate Moss, Harry Styles and Douglas Booth. His Instagram page shows them lounging by infinity pools and devouring Sunday roasts in country pubs. How does he know that he hasn’t fallen prey to the world of “celebrity fluff” of which he’s so dismissive? “It’s funny, you do become friends with people who are celebrated as celebrities because you’re in an industry where you’re with them all day, in the same way that dentists would become friends with dental nurses, you know? I mean, Florence [Welch, lead singer of Florence and the Machine] I’ve known for years, and then when they get super-famous, it does look like, ‘Oh, he just hangs out with famous people.’" He also has a firm grip on the perils of celebrity and its potentially toxic influence on the teenagers. “Fame is a tricky one. If you’re Amy Winehouse and famous for writing great songs, that’s great but it blows my mind that so many people engage with someone like Kim Kardashian. She’s got nothing to say, no opinions on anything. I’d hate teenagers to think that’s the way to be happy because it’s not – it’s fake.” Grimshaw with One Direction's Harry Styles Who does Grimmy look up to? “Someone like Miley Cyrus. For all the rolling around in her knickers, she actually has a conscience and founded her own charity for transgender youth. When she hosted the MTV Video Music Awards this year she got all the kids to come on and speak. Just putting transgender teens on TV to middle America is very powerful. “And after spending the morning with Adele, I would say her as well. She’s 100 per cent into being herself. I think that’s something quite heroic – to be cool with yourself.” And with that, he’s off to be measured for the suit he’s wearing on The X Factor this weekend – another element of the whirlwind celebrity lifestyle that he so clearly loves but which, to his credit, he knows isn’t quite real. BBC Radio 1’s Teen Awards are on Radio 1 Sunday 8th November at 3pm, and on CBBC at 5:30pm
Myleene Klass on Singing in the Rainforest: "The islanders thanked us for giving them a voice"
The former pop star returns to the jungle tonight, making music with the Ulithians on the remote Pacific island of Mog
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
The best festivals never play it safe, says the former Radio 1 DJ
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 small up-and-coming festivals like Festival No. 6 [in Portmeirion, Wales] and End of the Road [Wiltshire]. But for me it all depends on the line-up. At the moment I absolutely love the Maccabees and The Weekend and then something old school. I was lucky enough to see Fleetwood Mac but I would love to see David Bowie at a festival.” Edith Bowman is appearing at this month's Radio Times Festival.
Giles Coren on taxing the fat, being an "urban food ponce" and why life wasn't better in the 1950s
The food critic's new series Back in Time For Dinner considers what our changing meals have said about us, and society at large...
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 together but they found it a bit oppressive.” The end of rationing in 1954 cheered them up. However, Coren sees the family’s eagerness to embrace sugar in particular as a retrospective morality tale for a nation currently experiencing both an obesity crisis and a toxic obsession with fad diets and thinness. “You see Ros pouring sugar on her Frosties. She’s a slim girl, so it’s fine but it’s a metaphor for what happened when all this sugary food was put in front of us. We’d come from the 1950s where everything was government-regulated and boring but it was actually quite healthy and it gets freer and freer until the 1990s, where people are buying torpedoes of cola and you’ve got the beginning of the Buy One Get One Free offer and people eating on the go.” Unsurprisingly, considering that Coren has built a career around trashing acclaimed restaurants and expletive-laden Twitter rants, he’s got a controversial solution to the country’s weight worries. “I think the Government should step in.” Really? “I do.” He pauses. “It’s hard to tell whether I really think that or whether I just say it for effect, but in 2006 I made a documentary called Tax the Fat and I suggested you should tax people directly to combat the obesity crisis.You could certainly impose penalties on parents who don’t feed their children properly.” So is he advocating an attack on poor families who can’t afford to stock the fridge with fresh, nutrient-dense ingredients? “In Britain, we spend a smaller proportion of the family income on food than anywhere else in Europe. In the 50s, something like one third of the household income was spent on groceries but now it’s something like a tenth. A massive reduction. So although income is important, the truth is, no one’s spending enough on food as there are so many other things to spend money on these days.” He’s also optimistic about the power of “bonkers” modern diets such as the 5:2 (eating what you want for five days a week and fasting for two) to reconfigure our warped relationship with food. “Some form of famine is good for people. Not on a global scale, but not being able to eat very often makes you appreciate food more. If you don’t eat for a day, your appetite is piqued and you’re more excited about the food you do have. So with all of these diets, part of it is just thinking about what we eat. In the 50s, the woman in the family thought about it all day but by the 90s people are scoffing fast food on a train. To meet this demand, the food industry has to move faster and faster, so it’s just grinding up any animals it can find and sticking them in burgers.” If, as he says numerous times, Back in Time for Dinner aims to examine “what the food we eat tells us about the people we are”, what conclusion would an outsider draw about the Coren clan from the contents of their fridge? (Giles is married to journalist and food blogger Esther Walker with whom he has two young children – Kitty and Sam.) “We’ve got too much money and time on our hands,” he fires back dryly. “Our fridge is full of raw ingredients – bits of animal, bits of vegetables – or leftovers. You know, I like Big Macs and frozen pizza but we just don’t have it. We go up to the butcher or fishmonger and bring stuff home. We just look like terrible 21st-century, urban food ponces, which I guess we must be.” Filming the series opened his eyes to the fact that it was only surprisingly recently – in the late 1980s thanks to the advent of convenience food – that women finally had the freedom to pursue ambitions outside of the home. It’s a revelation that led Coren to reflect on his own slightly archaic approach to domestic duties. “We have some version of the 1950s in my house. I earn more money than my wife does and she does more cooking than me. If something goes bump in the night, it’s my job to go down with the cricket bat. If the kids throw up in the middle of the night, it’s her job. But the solution is to both be freelance journalists. My wife can cook my dinner without feeling like the slave to a chauvinist husband because then she can write about it and earn a living.” Coren may be a loose cannon (the Back in Time for Dinner team had to reshoot scenes as he couldn’t help but respond “F***!” every time he stepped into the Robshaws’ newly decorated kitchen) but he’s adamant the series should be taken seriously. “It’s not a parody. It’s not larking around. They’re eating the actual meals they would have at the time. It starts from a scientific premise. The old-fashioned, Tory thing of looking back to the 1950s doesn’t account for the life of drudgery for women or lack of expression for children, but if you could go back to a situation where we were more in touch with the food chain and all gathered for family meals but the woman isn’t stuck in the kitchen, that would be great. The question is, can we?” Back in Time for Dinner begins on Tuesday at 8:00pm on BBC2
Chris O'Dowd on Moone Boy, fatherhood and binge watching Broadchurch
The IT Crowd star, whose Irish Sky1 comedy returns tonight, fills us in on his TV picks
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 for comedy. It needs to be a lot warmer and Moone Boy is already very warm. If you’re not careful it can become saccharine. As Martin in Moone Boy is based on a younger version of you, will there come a point when you’ve exhausted childhood memories? I definitely feel that we’ve run out of stories about Martin as an 11-year-old. I’d like to do a film about a 14-or 15-year-old version of me, discovering girls. I like the idea of Martin being a big Blur guy and his friend Padraic being an Oasis head and them falling out over that... and girls. Have you got used to writing with a crying baby in the background? I write at night, generally between 11pm and 3am. I don’t know how it’s going to work, but hopefully it will fit in with the night feed and I can bring the baby out to the office. Does part of you wish that you were bringing up your son in Ireland, rather than LA? I would love my child to have the childhood I had, but when I think about it, it’s very self-aggrandising. As long as we’re good parents, it doesn’t matter. I just hope that he’s able to do things that I wasn’t. I don’t know whether we’ll stay in LA. I imagine that we’ll settle somewhere by the time he goes to school. I wouldn’t be surprised if we came back. Series three of Moone Boy begins on Sky1 tonight (Monday 2nd March) at 9.00pm
The secrets of Taking New York: putting the structure in structured reality
How was it cast? Is it scripted? Is it replacing Made in Chelsea? Educating Yorkshire producer David Clews reveals all...
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 question. We wanted to make a constructed series about young people living in a different city. And obviously NY is such an iconic city that people can either dream about going there or relate to that. These aren’t people from a privileged background in the way they are from MIC. They’re normal people doing different things so I think that makes it more relatable. But where it goes beyond that, I’m not sure. This is my production company, TwoFour, dipping our toes into reality TV. What was the appeal of this kind of programme after making the acclaimed Educating Yorkshire? There’s an audience out there for it and they’re really well-loved shows and have such a huge fan base. It may not be as worthy but it is real people and real emotions. Personally, it was interesting for us as a company to see if we can crack it as well. I don’t want to just be making fixed rigged series and I like the idea of doing something different. How scripted is Taking New York? Scenes are constructed but we take it all from their real lives. There definitely were certain members of the cast meeting each other for the first time at the start of the series and you could argue that they wouldn’t have met if they hadn’t been in the TV series – but at the same time they do all live in NY and they are all in the same circles. But in terms of their emotions and reactions, they are all genuine and we never want the cast in any way to be acting. It’s all based on their relationships and what’s actually happening in those circumstances. Is this being lined up as a replacement for MIC? I don’t think Monkey, the production company who make MIC, would say that! No, I don’t think so. I think there’s room for more than one. This is definitely the new, exciting baby on the block and hopefully it will be as successful as MIC. I guess it’s interesting to see what happens with the cast of MIC and TOWIE [The Only Way is Essex, below] – they've become very famous and that must have an impact on how they react to things. I think audiences will like the freshness – not just that they're a new cast but the fact that they’re new to being in a series as well. A lot of people would say that this kind of TV is complete trash. No, it isn’t. It’s entertainment but the production values and the talent that go into making a show like this are equal to Educating Yorkshire. It's a different genre and that means you make it in a different way. But the people that like this, love it as much as the people who love Educating Yorkshire. I think they're [the people who would say it's trash] just being a bit snobby. What did you learn from Taking New York? I was interested in how different is it from making a standard documentary series. What we did with Educating Yorkshire was make something very unobtrusive and truthful, and part of the success of the fixed rig is the fact that the cameras disappear. This is the opposite of that and has incredibly high production values. Scenes are lit and set and there’s a big team behind the camera, in front of the real people. I was interested in how they acted – would they act differently to something much more pure and subtle like Educating Yorkshire? But I think that when the cast actually buys into the process, actually they can’t help but be themselves. Taking New York continues at 9 pm on Mondays
Sherlock's Mrs Hudson gets arty in The Great British Paint Off
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...
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 portraits were received with a smile by the critics, they were keenly fought over by legions of relentlessly loyal Sherlock fans, eventually selling for £300 each, the price having been set by Stubbs herself. Has the Oscar-nominated Cumberbatch given her his verdict on his blue-eyed portrait? “I haven’t seen the boys yet, but they’ll probably tease me. They usually do.” Presenting your work on such a public stage is a daunting prospect for any artist, but particularly one who has spent years plagued by a crippling lack of self-confidence. “I’ve drawn since school but I could never draw outside in case anybody had a look over my shoulder...” she says. “Sometimes when I have a break from painting and then go back to it I think, ‘Oh, I’ve lost it.’” Time, and the reassurance of loved ones, has enabled Stubbs to overcome her self-doubt. “I started doing individual Christmas cards and my friends were really encouraging.” She didn’t have to look far for inspiration. “If I’m on a station platform and somebody walks past, I’ll try and remember what they look like and then, when I can, I sketch them. I love drawing old people. I’ve always loved old people and how one line can change a face. ” Richard Bacon describes himself as a passionate collector of “aggressively contemporary art”, and owns a Damien Hirst work that he bought for £10,000 and says is now worth lots more. "I go around the world to art fairs. You can love art without being a painter in the way that you can love music without being a pianist. I love buying art, knowing artists, talking to them about their craft and their trade and their lives. As an outside observing it it's wonderful. And so my passion is very real, even though I don't have the craft. He is convinced of the cathartic power of painting, although his concentration span make it difficult for him to settle down with a sketchbook. "We're constantly distracted now, always checking our phones, so more than ever we need some painting in our lives, where you leave your phone at home and go and set up an easel for several hours. I can’t see how that’s anything other than healthy, even if the painting’s terrible, even if you’re embarrassed by it. It’s like meditating; it’s a way of clearing your head. It’s such a mentally healthy thing to do.” Making the series last summer has persuaded Bacon that he should try harder to master the brushstrokes. “I spoke to my wife and we’ve had this idea that we might do drawing lessons together. I thought it would be like singing – you either can or you can’t sing. But actually you can draw, you just need the techniques explaining to you.” Bacon is keen that The Big Painting Challenge shouldn’t be dismissed as Bake Off with brushes. “I think it’s less Mel and Sue and probably closer to Countryfile. It’s got a gentle quality to it and that Sunday evening slot where you can imagine people like my dad will be watching – people who occasionally paint watercolours and like the idea of painting. And if the show inspires people to take up painting, that wouldn’t be a bad legacy, would it?” The Big Painting Challenge is on Sunday 22nd February at 6.00pm on BBC1
Bafta Film Awards 2015: Zoë Ball on taking to the red carpet, Strictly and her TV favourites
What connects Wolf Hall, Nick Grimshaw and Peppa Pig? A certain Strictly Come Dancing presenter...
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 brilliant one on Jimi Hendrix. My husband [DJ Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim] makes me steak and greens or a snack tray like a smorgasbord, which we call Norman’s Board. What are you hooked on now? Wolf Hall – I’m obsessed with Mark Rylance. I saw him in a stage production of Much Ado about Nothing when I was 14 and ever since then I’ve thought he’s one of the country’s most amazing actors. What’s the first thing you turn on in the morning? If I’m at home with Norm, it’s BBC Breakfast. We were devastated when Sian [Williams] left. Bill Turnbull and Sian were our favourites. If I’m in the car with the kids, they like Grimmy [Nick Grimshaw] on Radio 1. Have your children, Woody (15) and Nelly (five), introduced you to any shows? Woody watches The Inbetweeners. It’s hilarious. Obviously there are awkward moments but I’m quite frank with him. It’s a good education. With Nelly, we’ve all seen every episode of Peppa Pig ever made. I do worry about them having too much screen time, but my favourite thing as a kid was watching films with my grandma and it never did me any harm. Who’s your TV crush? Most of the cast of The Good Wife. One day I love Kalinda [Archie Panjabi] and the next it’s Diane [Christine Baranski]. They’re both amazing. Zoë Ball will be presenting for bafta.org. Watch the Baftas on Sunday 8th February at 9.00pm
The Great British Sewing Bee's Patrick Grant says "sewing isn't girly"
The Savile Row tailor talks about his seamless transition to dapper TV judge
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 pair 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 pair of trousers. I treat clothing with the same level of rigour and integrity as I did when I worked for companies that made industrial products.” After stints as a nanny, ski instructor and gardener, Grant was studying for an MBA at Oxford when he spotted an ad for the sale of Savile Row tailors Norton & Sons in the Financial Times. With a flash of fearless spontaneity that sets successful entrepreneurs apart from us mere mortals, he sold everything he owned – including his house and car – and bought the business. “If you drew a Venn diagram of all the things I really like – clothes, hand-made stuff, historic brands – Savile Row is bang in the centre of all of those. It was a small company that was knackered but I fell in love with it and didn’t think of the potential for it to be a complete disaster.” That was a decade ago and he has since revived the brand, injecting a contemporary twist and relaunching its subsidiary E Tautz line as a covetable ready-to-wear label, and he’s also got the high street covered with his Hammond & Co line for Designers at Debenhams, which has flown off the shelves since its 2013 launch. Grant is also one half of the British fashion industry’s hottest power couple thanks to his relationship with accessories designer and Marc Jacobs creative director Kate Hillier. It makes you wonder why he’s put this hard-won reputation on the line to take part in Sewing Bee? “It sounded like a lot of fun,” says Grant, shrugging. “Fashion is a funny, slightly snobby world, and perception is everything, but I’ve always taken the view that if something sounds like it’s going to be fun, just do it. The core of all the brands I’m involved in is sewing and textiles and clothes, so it didn’t seem very far away.” Sewing Bee is made by the production company behind Bake Off and shares many of its traits, including the pairing of an older female judge with a male junior. Does Grant see himself as Paul Hollywood’s successor in the heart-throb stakes? “No! I watch Bake Off, but I didn’t study Paul for tips. The shows are very different – we all eat cakes and bread so we have an understanding of how these things should taste, but a lot of people don’t know how clothes should fit. Our task is to help people appreciate the nuances of cut and fit and construction.” So what advice would he give the amateur male sewer looking to improve his favourite suit? Grant looks horrified. “His favourite suit! If he’s got a good suit then I wouldn’t advise him to be messing around with it. It’s better to start at the beginning and work your way up.” He laughs. “Start with the stuff that you can wear in the house, then work your way up to things that you’ll wear in public.” Buy Great British Sewing Bee: Fashion with Fabric your stylish, practical guide to dressmaking now for just £18.50 plus p&p (usually £25)
Catastrophe's Sharon Horgan: I've mined my life for comedy
“We started looking at our own lives and the genesis of our relationships and we thought it might be nice to see the beginning"
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 past decade – so has comedy. While back in 2006 Pulling was hailed as one of the few sitcoms where women were the stars rather than one-dimensional girlfriends, the TV schedules now feature far more female-led comedies, from Jessica Hynes’s Up the Women to Caitlin Moran’s semi-autobiographical Raised by Wolves (coming soon to C4). Although proud to be considered a pioneer of British, female-led sitcoms, Horgan is tired of fielding “the woman question”. “There’s an incredible amount of great comedy that wins awards and gets viewers that’s made by women. It doesn’t feel like it’s a thing any more or that it’s something you even have to talk about,” she explains shortly. Rather than obsess over gender, Horgan believes the most important part of any sitcom is that its characters are complex, flawed and, above all, real. Catastrophe, she hopes, will appeal to anyone who has ever navigated the relationship minefield. “We’re just trying to show that humans say the wrong things or people deal with things badly. Really dark things happen in any relationship and we didn’t want to steer clear of that because they’re the things you have to get through and still like and fancy the other person.” Catastrophe begins on Channel 4 tonight (Monday 19th January) at 10.00pm
Psychobitches: Michelle Gomez and Rebecca Front's comedy heroes… and Margaret Thatcher
Who inspired the cast of the offbeat Sky Arts comedy?
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 me and I feel incredibly honoured and inspired by them. For years I tried not to give anything of myself away because I’m not sure that’s beneficial for an actor. But I know now that, however honest I am in a book or an interview, it’s only a version of me. Michelle Gomez My mum My mother was very funny but slightly frightening. I’d describe her as emotionally pyrotechnic. She was beautiful, a Glaswegian Grace Kelly, and she would look at me and say, “What happened? Obviously, she loved me but I was a bit funky looking with really bad hair. It built my character and made me realise that no matter what’s thrown at you in life, you have to deal with it. Funny women I never made a conscious decision to do comedy but as an impressionable 12-year-old I looked up to Lucille Ball, and Marti Caine. They pulled funny faces for a living and I saw them and thought, “I can do that.” These days I admire Allison Janney and Tina Fey. There’s something about older women that makes them great comedians. They’ve been battered by life and that gives them a wisdom and confidence that means they can be funny and heartbreaking at the same time. I’ve played many women on Psychobitches but it’s Margaret Thatcher who worried me the most because of the juxtaposition. She’s a force-of-nature former prime minister and I’m a working-class Glaswegian. But there is normally some sort of physical hook to latch onto. With Thatcher I started by deepening the voice and then you add a bit of teeth and she’s arrived! I was surprised that I lost myself in her more than any other character I’ve played. People might think that it’s disrespectful to send up these women but most of them had such massive egos to get where they did that I think they’d be delighted that we were still talking about them. Psychobitches is on Sky Arts 1 tonight (25th November) at 9:30pm
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
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 and was written and got quite a long way down the line. With any film project there is always a 90 per cent chance of collapse and that was one of those times."
Sarah Beeny: "I’m a massive Prince Charles fan"
The property guru talks housing tips, voiceovers and how she doesn't care if people tune in for her boobs
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 what he sees because he has a very clear perspective. Any unfulfilled ambitions? I’d really like to do a voiceover in a children’s film because that would give me a lot of street cred with the boys! Something like How to Train Your Dragon 3. You once said that although you’d rather people watched your shows for the properties, it was “fine” if they tuned in “because of my boobs”. Do you still stand by that? [Laughs] I don’t really care. I’ve been pregnant quite a lot on telly and I filmed just after having babies, so they’re going to be there. My hair’s more of a problem. It’s mad and I don’t look in the mirror enough. Sarah Beeny’s Double Your House for Half the Money is on Channel 4 tonight at 8.00pm
Nicola Adams: Pioneering female boxing champion to take Commonwealth Games by storm
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
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 fast and keep me on my toes!” The different sexes do, however, share one surprising, common trait. “Even with the guys, it’s not about aggression. You’ve got to be really controlled when you go into the ring. If you go in there with anger, you’ll be much easier to catch. If you’re a normal person, you might go in to relieve a bit of stress, but we’re athletes and so we never think of it like that.” A lot has changed for Adams over the past two years. She began London 2012 as a little known underdog, and emerged a history-making hero, catapulted onto the sporting A-list, receiving an MBE and a deluge of invitations to appear on red carpets and chat shows. Politicians clambered to attach themselves to her effortless likeability, resulting in a trade mission to Brazil with David Cameron, and a Labour Party Conference appearance in 2012. Most satisfying, says Adams, is the way in which her win has encouraged others to take up the sport. Along with her high-profile fans (she has inspired both Boris Johnson’s sons and even Pippa Middleton to glove up) the “Nicola Adams effect” has been credited with a 50 per cent rise in the number of women participating in some form of boxing. “It’s amazing that I’ve been able to have that effect on people. It’s one thing that I didn’t realise was going to happen after 2012.” She has also had to come to terms with her role model status outside of the ring. Despite it being notoriously difficult for athletes to come out as gay, Adams is openly bisexual, quietly but courageously acknowledging her sexuality long before Tom Daley and Ian Thorpe’s more high-profile declarations. Although she was “very proud” to top the Independent’s 2012 Pink List celebrating Britain’s most influential gay, lesbian and transgender figures, she is reluctant to discuss her relationships – she would rather be defined as “just a person” than by whom she is dating. She does admit, however, that while the decision to come out was a terrifying one, staying quiet was never an option. “I’ve always been an open person and I just thought that it might help other people if I talked about everything. All the way through the Games I was never anybody but myself. It’s being me that inspired people so I’m just going to carry on doing that.” Much of Adams’s self-belief stems from childhood. Growing up on a tough Leeds council estate, there was ample opportunity to fall into trouble. However, it was her mother, Denver, a hairdresser, who kept Adams on the straight and narrow, taking her to church “now and again” and encouraging her to work hard at school where she excelled at maths and science. “I wanted to do something to impress my mum. I wanted to be a champion and for her to be able to say, ‘That’s my daughter.’” It was Denver who introduced her daughter to boxing. Divorced from Adams’s father and unable to find a babysitter, she took Nicola and her younger brother Kurtis to an aerobics class. Adams, who grew up watching videos of Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali with her dad, spotted a boxing class in the next room and joined in. “I wanted to be like Ali – compete in the Olympics and shuffle.” Adams was hooked and signed up to her local amateur club, despite being the only female member. Although she fought her first novice match a year later, it wasn’t until 1998 that the Amateur Boxing Association lifted its ban on allowing women to fight competitively. In 2001 she became the first female boxer to represent England and went on to win two silver medals at the World championships, followed by a European gold in 2011. Adams’s stumble into boxing may have had a fairytale ending, but she is determined that other young people shouldn’t have to rely on chance to discover their sporting passion and last year completed a stint as president of “Us Girls”, a programme aimed at getting women active in some of the UK’s most deprived areas. What does she make of the recent proposals by Jennie Price, the chief executive of Sport England, that girls should be coaxed onto the school games field with the promise of hairdryers in changing rooms? “They actually have that in my gym and I do my hair when I come out.” But shouldn’t girls be focusing on sport and not their post-workout hairdo? “When you’re out there playing, get it done. Everyone sees me in my tracksuit, but I like my Jimmy Choos and my Paul Smith T-shirts. You can be in the ring and then be on the red carpet looking glamorous.” When Adams does finally hang up her gloves, she hopes to make a transition into acting, having enjoyed a cameo in the BBC’s Waterloo Road earlier this year. “I watch loads of TV and I’d love to be in The Walking Dead or an action movie,” she grins. Before then, she has more than enough to keep her occupied in the ring. “I’ve had three silver medals in the World championships and I want to get gold. We’ve never had a double Olympic Champion, so I want to achieve that.” Although she’s competed in the European championships for the past two years, the Commonwealth Games will be Adams’s first return to the full glare of the world stage since her Olympic triumph. What will be going through her mind as she steps out into the clamorous Scottish arena? “I’ll think about my tactics and listen to my music and have a bit of a dance. Then I’ll have a joke with my coaches. I never really like to take anything too seriously.” With that, she glances anxiously at her watch and excuses herself to go and warm up for her next training session. Whatever she says, you’d be hard pushed to find a more serious athlete than Nicola Adams.
Meet the new generation of home nation sporting stars
Remember the names Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Eilidh Child, Michael Conlan and Aled Davies
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 saw the names of everyone that has won there. Carolina Kluft’s name was there five times, Jess’s three. Denise Lewis’s was there. On the men’s side, Daley Thompson's.” Daley Thompson, who’s no relation, is a huge fan. The winner of two Olympic golds and a world championship title in the decathlon, he is notoriously hard to ignite when it comes to assessing potential. “You never like to put too much pressure on young shoulders but I’m going to anyway,” he said earlier this year. “She looks more than capable of becoming Britain’s next golden girl and great all-rounder.” The graph of improvement for Johnson-Thompson has shown a steady upward curve since she took part in her first athletics event at the age of 12. Until then, she was engaged in a battle with her mother Tracey as to how to fill the spare time of an excitable, hyperactive, tomboy child. Mum was a dancer whose profession took her around the world and into the path of Katarina’s dad Ricardo. She wanted her daughter to follow in her footsteps, but Katarina preferred football kit to tutus – though she did win an audition at London’s Royal Ballet School. The compromise between football and ballet was athletics. Johnson-Thompson lived in the Bahamas for the first year of her life but has been based in Liverpool with her mother ever since. She visited her father in the Caribbean after competing at London 2012 and was surprised to find that Bahamians had adopted her as one of their own. There will be distant but vocal support from afar for her gold medal bid in Glasgow. As Ennis was celebrating a glorious success in London two years ago, Johnson-Thompson was grinning her way to 15th place – and a turning point in her career: “I was really focused on qualifying for the Olympics, even though it was well before my time. I was 19, so just to get there was a huge achievement. It was then I realised I wanted to do it as a career. “I found the whole Olympic experience surreal. The first moment I stepped onto the track, it was overwhelming. The roar of the crowd was something I’ll never, ever forget. I’m fortunate, as a heptathlete I was out there for two days so I was able to absorb it. As soon as I crossed the finish line in the 800 metres, I got thousands of tweets saying ‘Rio, Rio, Rio...’ so I think I’m gonna end up having some pressure but I’ve got a lot of hard work to do before I get to Jess’s standard.” A fifth place finish at last year’s world championships in Moscow has been followed by a series of personal-best performances this season. “It’s been very heartening,” says her coach Mike Holmes. “We managed to find a way to keep going. Like Jess, relentless, year on year on year. I admire Jess so much because she never yields in competition and it’s great to watch. Katarina’s basically a shy person but she likes to put on a show, it’s a bit of a contradiction. She rises to the occasion when it counts. She finds joy in competition, because athletes do slog away in training when the rain’s dripping down their neck.” The main threat to Johnson-Thompson in Glasgow is likely to come from the Canadian Brianne Theisen-Eaton, who led for six of the seven disciplines before finishing second overall in Gotzis. However, Denise Lewis is confident that Johnson-Thompson can only get better. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she improved again this year,” says Lewis. “There’s improvement to be made in the hurdles, and I can see her, as she gets stronger, putting serious markers down in the throws. She’s the complete package.” For all her attributes, the sponsorship and endorsement deals will continue to roll in only as long as she performs in the competition arena. There is giddy talk of a titanic domestic show- down when Ennis-Hill returns from maternity leave but for Johnson-Thompson, the only target occupying her mind is the Commonwealth title. “I’ve never been favourite going into a senior event and I don’t know how I’m gonna cope with that. I’ll go into the competition like I always do and think its anyone’s to take. The dream would be to win the gold medal.” Eilidh Child Country: Scotland Sport: 400m hurders Watch her: the final is on Thursday BBC1 at 8:25pm Eilidh Child has just been sent a picture of herself splashes across a billboard outside Glasgow airport. It’s the first time that her status as Scotland’s Commonwealth Games poster girl has hit home and she isn’t sure what to make of it. “It’s weird. It’s not something I would have chosen, but it’s come upon me and I’m very flattered,” she says. “If people are looking at me like that I’m obviously running well. I’m happy to take it on.” And she certainly is running well. While many athletes have spent the past few months fighting for a place on their national team, Child, 27, qualified for the 400m hurdles at the Commonwealth Games last September following an impressive 2013 season that saw her win a bronze medal at the European Indoor championships. That good form has continued this year with victory at the British championships, so Child acknowledges that she is now “definitely expected” to win a medal in Glasgow. However, a formidable obstacle stands between her and a gold medal – Jamaica’s Kaliese Spencer. “To beat her, I’d have to run my perfect race and get every single hurdle spot on,” she explains. “Both Spencer’s PB and her season’s best is half a second faster than mind, so I’d have to go out there and run a PB.” A noticeable absence on the start line will be Child’s Team GB colleague and long-term rival Perri Shakes-Drayton, who will miss the Games after undergoing knee surgery. “I finished higher than Perri at the World Championships in Moscow last year, but she was injured so there’s always that feeling of wanting to beat her at her best. We always seem to get the best out of each other so having her there this year would have helped both of our progressions.” Medal hopes aside, Child’s main goal is to enjoy Games fever in a way she couldn’t at the London Olympics. She was overwhelmed by the occasion and, despite reaching the semi-finals, she feels her performance suffered. “I love athletics, but at the Olympics I forgot that. I kind of thought, ‘I don’t really belond here.’ I don’t want that experience at the Commonwealth Games, regardless of how I perform. I want to embrace it.” One thing that she did take away from London was a firm friendship with Jessica Ennis-Hill. The pair shared a flat in the Olympic village and Child saw first-hand how Ennis-Hill dealt with pressure. “I saw how nervous she got. It was nice to see the human side of her and see that even the best in the world get nervous.” Born in Perth, Child got her first taste for the hurdles as a teenager when she went with her sister to their local athletics club. After graduating from Edinburgh University she became a PE teacher. It was only after she won a silver at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi that she decided to dedicate herself to athletics. The following year, with encouragement from her fiancé (former Irish sprinter Brian Doyle), Child relocated to Bath to take advantage of the university’s world-class facilities and coaching set-up. Although the move has provided respite from Scotland’s pre-Games hypes, Child says she will relish racing in front of a home crowd at Hampden Park. “I don’t think people appreciate the effect it can have. To have a whole crowd cheer you on is incredible.” Michael Conlan Country: Northern Ireland Sport: Boxing Watch him: The semi-finals of the bantamweight competition are on Friday from 1:00pm on the red button You were knocked out in the first round of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. What are you hoping for this time around? I’m going for gold – if I get anything else, I’ll throw it away. I was 17 in Delhi and didn’t perform. I want to right some wrongs this year. Were you pleased with bronze in London? I was over the moon. But since then I’ve won silver at the European championships – and it’s just made me hungrier for gold. Why did you decide to move up a weight category [to 56kg] after the Olympics? I was having problems maintaining the 50kg weight and training was hard because I felt so drained. My world ranking has gone up to number two since I changed and I’m performing better. Also, I can eat more! Do you have a pre-fight routine? Usually I listen to the Rolling Stones in the dressing room. Sometimes the “What if I lose?” question comes into my mind, but I can’t let it take hold. Aled Davies Country: Wales Sport: Para shot put and discus Watch him: The men’s discus final is on Monday BBC1 at 10:00am You’re the captain of Team Wales – how did you get the job? Brian Davies [the chef de mission of Team Wales] didn’t want the role to affect the athlete’s performance and he knew I would take it well. I’m only 23 so there are more experienced people on the team than me, but I want to be there for everyone and I’m a believer in leading by example. I think I’m the only para–captain in the world and the only one before me was Tanni Grey-Thompson. How did you discover your throwing talent? When it was announced that London had won the 2012 Olympics, I knew I had to be there. It sounds cheesy, but I felt it was my destiny. I tried various sports and then I met Anthony Hughes, who is now my coach. He noticed that I had a natural arm. Eight years later we were competing for Paralympic gold. What was your reaction to the news that discus won’t be in the Rio Paralympics? I’m heartbroken not to get the chance to defend my gold medal. It’s horrible, I can’t even find the words, but it’s a decision that’s out of my hands. Have the London Paralympics left a legacy? Definitely. I wouldn’t wear shorts until I was 14 because I was ashamed of my disability, but since London 2012 I’ve seen children with disabilities wearing shorts in the park. That’s the legacy right there. Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Eilidh Child, Michael Conlan and Aled Davies are SSE Home Nation ambassadors. Tweet your support for your favourite using #GO followed by their country
Wimbledon 2014: Virginia Wade on the women to watch
The women's singles is wide open, says former champ Virginia Wade - but these five will be in the mix
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. She’s probably not ready to win Wimbledon, but definitely one to watch. Maria Sharapova Best Wimbledon: Champion 2004 It’s hard to win the French Open and Wimbledon in the same year, but Sharapova is in a strong position. She got to the third round of the Italian Open and the fourth round in Melbourne. Her biggest obstacle is Serena. She hasn’t beaten the world number one since the 2004 Wimbledon final, even though they’ve met 15 times since. But the thing to remember is that Sharapova is tough. Best of the rest Ajla Tomljanovic The Croatian got to the third round of the French Open without losing a set. She’ll be good on grass. Petra Kvitova The left-handed Czech is playing better than she has in a while. Taylor Townsend and Anna Schmiedlova Townsend is American and just 18; Schmiedlova 19 and Slovak. They don’t have the experience to win but both will only improve. Get a discounted stay in London with Radio Times Travel, see here for more info
Wimbledon 2014: Tim Henman on the men to watch
Can Andy Murray win back-to-back titles? The former British hope looks at the men he'll have to beat…
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 Murray as he’s had to come back from his back surgery, but he’s definitely moving in the right direction. He was disappointed to lose to Nadal in the French Open semi-finals, but he’s as good as anyone on grass. He should go into Wimbledon feeling relaxed and excited about returning to the place of his greatest success. It must be a huge honour to walk out onto Centre Court on the first Monday as defending champion. Best of the rest: Dominic Thiem The Austrian lost to Murray in Rotterdam early this year but put up a really good fight. It’s going to be interesting to see how he adapts to grass but he’s an interesting outsider to watch. Jerzy Janowicz The Polish number one has gone off the boil a bit this year but he had a great run at last year’s tournament, reaching the semi-finals. His game has got so much fire power that he’s always a threat. John Isner and Ivo Karlovic These two — American and Croatian respectively — are always going to be dangerous on grass because they’re tall and have powerful serves. Get a discounted stay in London with Radio Times Travel, see here for more info
William Boyd and PD James on bringing Bond to life and adopting Mr Darcy
Six writers reveal what it’s like to live, love – and lose – their favourite characters
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 with language like that.” I decided to attempt an explanation of these things, but I also wanted to write as Jane Austen would. It was a challenge, but sometimes I’d write a sentence and think, “I’ve got it!” The art of letting go - Mark Haddon When it came to the film adaptation [of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time], I took the decision very early on to choose the right people for the job and go home. Lots of authors talk about being a parent and the book being a child. It starts off weak and unprotected but grows rapidly. I think Curious is about 45 now and I’m the ageing parent and occasionally it sends me postcards or I get a phone call to find out what it’s doing, but other than that it’s on its own. Getting it right... - Joanne Harris Initially I got sent a script [for the adaptation of her 1999 novel Chocolat] that was awful beyond belief so I just ignored it. Then I got another that was a bit better, followed by a call from Juliette Binoche saying, “By the way, I have the lead in your film and I’d like to come and read through the script with you”. I’ve met writers who feel that having their book turned into a script was the worst thing that ever happened to them, but I was lucky. They kept the feel and three-quarters of my story and I could hardly argue with a cast that included Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. ...getting it wrong - Louis de Bernieres I had a fixed idea of how everyone in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin looked and behaved. When I saw the film, it was completely different. For example, the character of Pelagia is based on a girl I saw in a café in Kefalonia. Penelope Cruz acted it well and of course she’s gorgeous, but she didn’t look remotely like the woman in the café. Similarly, I thought of Captain Corelli as a not very big but charming Italian and I got Nicolas Cage, a lugubrious tall American. He’s a great actor, but he just wasn’t the type of person I had in mind. Played by a puppet - Michael Morpurgo I thought it was absurd [on hearing a puppet would play Joey the horse in his novel War Horse]. My response was that it was impossible, mixed up with excitement that the National Theatre were thinking of doing the show. I asked how it was going to work because, to me, puppets meant a pantomime horse and this was a serious play about the horrors of the First World War. It’s all down to the puppeteers, who are amazing. Their transformation is almost miraculous, but the one rule is that you never talk to them when they’re working. They are the horse. They are Joey. Letting Go (part of Character Invasion Day) is on Saturday at 3:30pm on BBC Radio 4. Follow @RadioTimes
Claudia Winkleman on The Great British Sewing Bee: “I fell in love several times filming the series”
“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
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. “I’m rubbish at sewing,” she remarks, head in hands. “I tried to sew something from scratch. It’s impossible. I don’t have a machine. That terrifies me.” Self-deprecation is her signature style. She was “dreadful” on last year’s Bake Off celebrity special for Comic Relief, refuses to watch herself on TV because she is “a bit shrill and annoying” and gives her job description as “dying my skin orange and reading out loud”. Had you no previous knowledge of Claudia Winkleman, she would convince you in her witty, effusive way that she was a complete disaster. However, you only have to glance at her recent projects – The Radio 2 Arts Show, Film 2014, Strictly Come Dancing – to realise that the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Which show is closest to her heart? “Whatever I’m doing, I LOVE,” she says with sheer, unadulterated passion. “I feel a bit Radio 2 at the moment because Strictly’s done and we’re finishing Sewing Bee. During Strictly I become obsessed and don’t want to talk about anything but then a week after it’s done I can’t even remember who won. I think it was Abbey.” Winkleman began as the host of It Takes Two, Strictly’s weeknight spin off show. She has since risen through the ranks, standing in for Bruce Forsyth as he gradually reduces his schedule. The most recent series saw her co-host the main Saturday night slot with Tess Daly. She was a massive hit with viewers who relished both her quick wit and the emergence of an all-female presenting duo – something of a rarity on primetime television. How does it feel to break broadcasting ground? Winkleman is characteristically dismissive. “I don’t think it should be anything unusual…but I love it because I feel like I’m only standing in. It’s very temporary. I just want to be helpful. It’s no biggie.” Only, it is. In an industry where female presenters are all too often a pretty footnote to their male counterparts, it is undeniable progress to have two women carrying one of the nation’s best-loved programmes. And with rumours of a Brucie retirement circulating, it might not be such a temporary gig after all. The Great British Sewing Bee starts on Tuesday 18 February at 8pm on BBC2
Australian Open: Andy Murray is "the man to beat"
It’s a tennis war out there in 2014, says John Lloyd
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’s no sign that he’s satisfied with what he’s achieved so far and that’s great for British tennis.” Could Murray win in Melbourne? It’s unlikely, says Lloyd, but not impossible. “Realistically, Nadal and Djokovic are the obvious favourites.” While it would be stupid to rule Federer out of winning another grand slam, Lloyd believes he is unlikely to make the final in any of this year’s major tournaments. “For a while Andy was the weakest of the ‘Fab Four’. But now Murray belongs in the big three and he knows it. They fear him and he fears them because they know what each other is capable of.” The recent appointment of Boris Becker as Djokovic’s head coach suggests the Serb is looking to increase his silverware in 2014. “It’s a signal that Novak won one slam this year and wasn’t as successful as he would have liked,” says Lloyd. “It’s a sign of his desire.” Meanwhile, Nadal is as dangerous as ever, having finished the year as world number one just months after returning from a knee injury. “I’d say that Nadal will win the French Open, but the other grand slams are up for grabs. “We’re very lucky in the men’s game because they’re so difficult to separate,” says Lloyd. “It’s a tennis war out there in 2014, fought between the three best players on the planet.” Tennis: Australian Open is on Sunday from 12 midnight on Eurosport and Eurosport 2. Follow @RadioTimes