Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2023-08-16T09:00:41.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Sir Ranulph Fiennes has conquered the Eiger and sawn off his own fingertips, but he won’t climb a ladder. Why?
items: Is Gary Lineker going to present Match of the Day in his underpants? "I’ve kind of said I’ll have to do it"
items: Jonathan Agnew and Geoffrey Boycott on why they're the odd couple of Test Match Special
items: Bruce Forsyth on politics, reality TV and leaving Strictly
items: Why the reunion gig will be vintage Monty Python
items: Rio Ferdinand on racism, ballet and England's chances in the World Cup
items: John Humphrys: I am a different interviewer now from the one who started on Today
items: Jon Snow: “I’m really a reporter. I’m actually a rather poor presenter"

Sir Ranulph Fiennes has conquered the Eiger and sawn off his own fingertips, but he won’t climb a ladder. Why?
type: item
date: 2016-11-14T09:32:00.000Z
creator: Matthew Stadlen
subject: Books
subject: Going Out
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: audio
description: “I know that I would be frightened up at the top”
encoded: Fear and Sir Ranulph Fiennes, you’d be forgiven for thinking, go together like a snowstorm and a heatwave. Yet the man who was once described by the Guinness Book of World Records as the greatest living explorer turns out to be a normal person after all. At least, that’s what he’d have you believe. There’s something surreal about listening to a man say that he’s afraid of heights when you know that he has conquered the notorious north face of the Eiger with its 1,800 metres of sheer rock, and, who, at the age of 65, became the oldest Briton to reach the summit of Everest, which is close to the cruising altitude of a passenger jet. Surely he’s having me on when he reveals he can’t even clean the gutters at home because the thought of it makes him so queasy? Apparently not. “I hold the bottom of the ladder and send Louise [Billington, his second wife who is 24 years his junior] up to clean the leaves out because it’s three storeys,” he says in that rich and reassuring tone of his. “I know that I would be frightened up at the top.” How, then, did Sir Ranulph cope with life on the Eiger’s dizzying rock face in winter? Kenton Cool, his guide and one of the world’s most experienced climbers, is part of the answer. “He has experience of working with people who have vertigo and making them control their minds,” Fiennes explains. The trick, he says, is never to look down – or to even think about it. “For three days and even nights on little ledges I said that constantly to myself.” Steve Seaton, Peter James, Sara Odell and Sir Ranulph Fiennes on a glacier hike in Argentina in 1999 There was a hitch when he found himself perched precariously above a vertical 1,500-metre drop and had to look down in order to make sure his crampons were properly engaged with the tiny footholds. He had reached what’s known as the Traverse of the Gods on the north face of the Eiger and was terrified. “I wanted to retreat before the rushing noise of the vertigo made my fingers weak. You can’t affo…

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Is Gary Lineker going to present Match of the Day in his underpants? "I’ve kind of said I’ll have to do it"
type: item
date: 2016-04-30T06:00:00.000Z
creator: Matthew Stadlen
subject: Football
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: "It’s a mixture of excitement and agony," he says of Leicester City's bid for Premier League glory
encoded: It was Gary Lineker’s concern that, together with Gazza’s tears, won the hearts of a nation when Bobby Robson’s England fell tantalisingly short of reaching the World Cup final at Italia 90. Now, 26 years later, it’s the agony and ecstasy of the boy from Braunstone that symbolises the nail-biting progress of Leicester City towards the impossibility of Premier League glory. At a time when the financial gulf separating football from its fans has never been wider, it’s hard not to be charmed by the intensity with which the Match of the Day host is living his boyhood team’s every kick. Lineker’s Leicester roots run deep. As a child in the 1970s he helped his dad on the family’s fruit-and-veg stall in Leicester Market during the holidays. After leaving school with O-levels that included an A in maths, he joined Leicester City’s academy and, by the time he was transferred to Everton for £800,000 nearly ten years later, he had topped the old First Division’s scoring chart for 1984/5. Then, when the club faced financial difficulties in 2002, he was part of the consortium that helped to rescue it. No matter that Leicester’s closest rivals for the title are Tottenham Hotspur, with whom he won the FA Cup in 1991, every sinew of his muscular torso craves the fulfilment of an unlikely dream. Talking of torsos, Lineker was still so sure in December that Leicester couldn’t win the league that he vowed to present the first Match of the Day of next season in his underpants should they achieve the unthinkable. Will he be true to his word? "You’ll have to wait and see," he demurs, smiling. "I’ve kind of said I’ll have to do it." Of course, with Spurs hunting them down, Leicester may yet stumble, but at the start of the season they were 5,000–1 on to win the league. Punters may be cursing not taking those odds now. “I’d have said you were wasting your money as well,” says Lineker. “When I sent the tweet in December I categorically knew there was zero chance that they would win.” Which …

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Jonathan Agnew and Geoffrey Boycott on why they're the odd couple of Test Match Special
type: item
date: 2015-07-29T09:00:00.000Z
creator: Matthew Stadlen
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: As the Third Test of The Ashes gets underway, the chalk-and-cheese commentators talk cake-eating and gags in the TMS box
encoded: They are, in so many ways, the odd couple of BBC radio. Jonathan Agnew is a gangly 6ft 4in, every inch – in appearance at least – the overgrown public schoolboy, while Geoff Boycott is a sold 5ft 10in, with opinions as blunt as his Yorkshire accent. What unites them is a love of cricket and star billing on Test Match Special, the nation's favourite sports commentary and the soundtrack to this Ashes summer. Educated at Uppingham School, Agnew is the well-spoken three-cap wonder who took just four Test wickets for England. Boycott is the hard-bitten Yorkshire legend of the 1970s and 80s, the son of a miner who went on to captain his county and score more than 8,000 Test runs. It’s an unpredictable pairing. “Geoffrey”, as Agnew formally refers to Boycott with what can seem like mock-respect, somehow allows himself to be wound up without diminishing his status as a legend of the game. At 20 years younger, Agnew casts Boycott as a crotchety uncle, but one for whom he shows warm affection. Agnew may be the BBC’s cricket correspondent, but Boycott, with his playing record and bullish persona, plays the senior role. “I think he’s found his forte,” the Yorkshireman says of the man he first met not far short of 40 years ago. “He was a good county cricketer, [but] you could see he had a very modest Test career because he kept hitting the middle of the bat when he bowled and the idea was to find the edge. He’s got a good sense of humour, he can take the mickey, he can also accept it as well. You poke fun at him, he doesn’t get uppity.” This is Agnew's 25th season in the TMS box. It all began for him in 1991 as a summariser alongside Brian Johnston, who had an uncontrollable fit of the giggles at an Agnew double entendre, "Aggers, for goodness' sake stop it!" will go down as one of the great moments in sports commentary, but Johnston's influence went far deeper. "without Johnners' influence, I know what broadcaster I would like to be," Agnew says, 'but I don't think I would have…

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Bruce Forsyth on politics, reality TV and leaving Strictly
type: item
date: 2015-03-06T14:40:00.000Z
creator: Matthew Stadlen
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: "I was beginning to feel a bit stale. It’s an awful thing to feel as a performer, that you’re not enjoying it as much as you should do and you’re not giving as much as you could.”
encoded: Bruce Forsyth is fed up. Not with work, obviously. He turned 87 on 22 February, but it's not age that's getting him down. He's still got plenty of energy and retirement certainly isn't on the agenda. No, Bruce is tired of reality TV. “I have had enough of it,” he says. “I don’t know how long it’s been going on but it’s probably well over ten years.” Just before Christmas, he hosted Bruce’s Hall of Fame (below), a BBC1 show where a mix of performers celebrated the artists who inspired their careers, and he wants more of the same on our screens. “I’d like to see performers playing together, having fun together, entertaining together, instead of this thing that we’re caught up in.” View oEmbed on the source website Back in 1958, aged 30, Brucie had his big break as the host of ITV’s famous variety show Sunday Night at the Palladium. In those days, they’d fill the programme up to 40 weeks a year with homegrown talent as well as big-name stars from America. But because of the lack of variety stars these days, he’s unsure whether a revival would be possible today. “I don’t think you have the top-of-the-bill names. The top-of-the-bills in our day were huge world stars. It’s all got to be pop stars now.” The reason? The X Factor. “I don’t watch it because they have singer after singer after singer after singer... and then, after that, they have another singer. That, to me, isn’t entertainment. It’s a very good show, it’s produced very, very well and I’m all for giving young people a chance to become big names, but I want more in two hours of entertainment than only singing.” Brucie, of course, hosted The X Factor's biggest rival for ratings on BBC1, Strictly Come Dancing. But after 11 series and a decade in the job he decided it was time to step down last year. "I was beginning to feel a bit stale. It’s an awful thing to feel as a performer, that you’re not enjoying it as much as you should do and you’re not giving as much as you could.” And it was his decision. He didn’t f…

Why the reunion gig will be vintage Monty Python
type: item
date: 2014-06-29T05:01:00.000Z
creator: Matthew Stadlen
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: ... except for a high-kicking chorus line courtesy of Arlene Phillips
encoded: Monty Python are back – which is great news for fans of surreal comedy and TV nostalgia, but, you might think, not such good news for lovers of something completely different. After all, the sketches are so well known that fans can parrot them word for word. What can possibly be new about a legendary 1970s comedy that was last revived more than 30 years ago? Eric Idle, 71, the Python charged with assembling and writing the new show, to be staged to sell-out crowds from 1 July in London’s vast O2 arena, explains: “This is a musical revue with a chorus of 20 and lots of Python songs, many of which have never been done by the Pythons before. And many of the sketches have never been performed live by us.” The last time the group performed together was in 1982 in Los Angeles, complete with Graham Chapman, who later died of cancer in 1989. “I wanted to do a show different from the Hollywood Bowl, in this our final outing,” says Idle, just days before the first of the ten live performances. “How wonderful to have the opportunity to say goodbye. “Comedy has been largely stand-up for the past 25 years. This show is different in so far as it is sketch comedy. So the stage will be filled more and there are sets and costumes and an orchestra, led by my old collaborator John Du Prez. This is the first attempt at musical revue for about 50 years. I called it ironically ‘Déjà revue’. “We pulled in Arlene Phillips, who choreographed The Meaning of Life, and she has been absolutely brilliant. The 20 boys and girls of the chorus give the whole show an energy that I felt was essential to fill the O2.” In November last year, when the Pythons announced their shock reunion, I met all five of them together and Terry Gilliam, 73, was bemoaning the impact of ageing: “The worst thing is on the bus or Tube when a girl in her 20s offers you her seat. It’s so depressing.” “I thought that was twerking,” responded Idle, to much laughter. “This tour is the opposite of A Hard Day’s Night. This is t…

Rio Ferdinand on racism, ballet and England's chances in the World Cup
type: item
date: 2014-06-11T12:55:00.000Z
creator: Matthew Stadlen
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: "We’ve nothing to lose. Nobody expects us to set the tournament alight"
encoded: When Roy Hodgson’s England team lands in Brazil they will not be burdened by a nation’s hopes. There is almost zero expectation that the captain Steven Gerrard will return in July brandishing the World Cup. But for Gerrard’s old teammate Rio Ferdinand – holder of 81 England caps – that’s a good thing. “We got tagged as the ‘Golden Generation’ and that weighed heavily around a lot of our necks. We were never in contention.” Ferdinand didn’t play under Hodgson and retired from international football last spring. But he describes the England boss (a man fluent in five foreign languages) as a student of the game. “He’s got a free hit with a young squad – to keep the expectations low and real. He’ll be able to prepare for the following tournament. It bodes well for England in years to come.” Ferdinand is the BBC’s star signing for Brazil. Is he nervous? “If I wasn’t, it would be strange. It’s obviously out of my comfort zone.” But he’s been given training, done some TV work and won’t be going in “completely blind”. And he has the confidence of the BBC’s main presenter Gary Lineker, who backs Rio’s “reputation for telling it how it is”. How did Ferdinand react to pundits as a player? “When you’re winning it’s not a problem. When you’re losing they’re nitpicking.” We meet in central London at the launch of the BBC’s World Cup campaign. Although we don’t know it at the time, Ferdinand is living out his last few days as a Manchester United player, a club he’d been at for 12 years, winning six Premier League titles, two League Cups and, in 2008, the Champions League as captain. He is 35 now and a married father of three, but he is being supervised and my questions scrutinised. Behind him is a BBC publicist and across the table are two representatives from his agency. Born to a St Lucian father and an Anglo-Irish mother, Ferdinand was brought up on a Peckham council estate in south London. As a boy he didn’t just play football, but also trained in gymnastics where he was spott…

John Humphrys: I am a different interviewer now from the one who started on Today
type: item
date: 2014-03-24T10:43:00.000Z
creator: Matthew Stadlen
subject: Current Affairs
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: The BBC’s grand inquisitor John Humphrys submits to a grilling by RT – that’s if we can get a word in...
encoded: John Humphrys interrupts me across his kitchen table. The fact that I’m in the middle of asking whether interrupting sometimes disturbs the flow of an interview doesn’t seem to register. Only half my question makes it safely across to his side of the table. “It’s essential sometimes. It’s vital – not just allowable or defensible,” he says defiantly, admitting that his reputation for interrupting was “maybe” once fair but not any more. “Otherwise you get party political broadcasts and people would go off on little journeys you don’t want them to go on.” Humphrys himself can be difficult to interrupt. He gives long, detailed answers that wind their way to a conclusion. He’s 71 this summer, and there’s no sign of him slowing down. In fact, he runs every day, cycles “pretty much everywhere in London” and is sporting a pair of trainers below his navy jumper and dark blue chinos. It’s 27 years since he joined Today. Years as a foreign correspondent, first in the US and then South Africa, as well as more than half a decade presenting the BBC’s Nine o’Clock News had come before. But it is as a fearless, sometimes frightening interviewer that he is now best known. He claims to have mellowed “enormously” over the years, but he’s lost none of his ability to eviscerate an interviewee. Just ask his former boss, George Entwistle, who resigned as BBC director-general hours after an appearance on Today, when he fell victim to Humphrys on devastating form. So, is the rottweiler reputation unfair? “Rottweilers – I’ve never had one and I don’t want one – but I’m told they can be extremely gentle. They’re big, powerful and strong – none of which I am. They just have to be trai...” He stops mid-word. Trained? “Your word not mine in the end! They have to learn and I am a different interviewer now from the one who started on Today. That is a fact." He says, though, that he does sometimes want to have an argument on air. Then he checks himself. “You don’t set out to have a row but when the…

Jon Snow: “I’m really a reporter. I’m actually a rather poor presenter"
type: item
date: 2013-12-16T05:41:00.000Z
creator: Matthew Stadlen
subject: Current Affairs
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Channel 4 News host says his real strength lies in bringing often harrowing world stories to viewers
encoded: Jon Snow is wearing a red tie and red socks. The face of Channel 4 News since 1989, he’s tall, friendly and emphatically modest. He’s known for carrying off outrageous ties while presenting cutting-edge programmes. But is he really a rebel? “If you asked people around here, they’d say I was one of the most conservative faces in the newsroom – that’s small ‘C’ – but there is a rebel in me. "I’m wearing a bright tie largely because they told me colours on television didn’t work. In old-fashioned colour TV they would blow out a bit. I wore them deliberately.” It’s late afternoon and we’re sitting in a glass office at ITN. The clock is ticking. At 7pm Snow will read the news to one million viewers. “I’ve probably done about 6,000 programmes and I love it. Every day is different and the challenges are great – sometimes very great if things happen just before I go on air, or while I’m on air.” Snow was born in 1947 in Sussex. In his teens he wanted to become a Conservative MP. It wasn’t until he was “radicalised” in Uganda while working for Voluntary Service Overseas that his ambitions changed. “I was suddenly aware that I was dealing with kids who were just as bright as any kid I’d ever met but who had absolutely no books. I felt a sense of injustice.” Despite a C, a D and an E in his A-levels, Snow took up a place at Liverpool University to study law. But he didn’t last long. It was, he says, at the height of the anti-apartheid era. “In my second year I was sent down for a year with nine others for organising a sit-in in protest against the university’s investments in South Africa.” Snow decided to become a journalist in a bid to return to Uganda. His first job was at a London radio station. “My first day as a hack was the very first day of LBC. Forty years ago this year!” He sees himself as the product of nepotism. His presenter cousin Peter, ten years older, was already at ITN when he applied for a role there. “I don’t think he put in a word for me, but I think it was…