Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2026-02-24T09:54:55.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Jo Butterfield on Paris Paralympics heartache: "This isn't a recreational thing for me, it's my job"
items: Three's company
items: Six Nations podcasters James Haskell and Mike Tindall talk landing Prince William and Princess Kate as guests on their show
items: 'It's not always about winning'
items: 'I'm happy behind, chasing the pack'
items: Snowboarder Charlotte Bankes reveals why she doesn't need to diet and worry about what she eats
items: Alpine ski racer Dave Ryding talks mental health journey: "I really don't think UK Sport understands"
items: Time for a change
items: Misha Glenny reveals his wife Kirsty Lang’s advice as he replaces Melvyn Bragg for Our Time
items: Let the music play
items: You’re ho, ho, hired?
items: 'I feel free'
items: Wake Up Dead Man cast reveal their favourite detectives and whether they’d make good murderers
items: Lord Alan Sugar dishes on Celebrity Apprentice and why he allowed Thomas Skinner to return for it
items: Amadeus star Paul Bettany reveals how a fan's selfie intruded on a tragic family moment
items: 'It's not a whodunnit!'
items: Wake Up Dead Man cast reveal Knives Out film's relevance to "scary times" we live in – and who has pitched a return for a sequel
items: Screen shot
items: The magic of Mozart
items: Amadeus stars Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe talk Mozart drama's 'woke' accusations and the "strange" power of conducting
items: Edith Bowman opens up about replacing Sound of Cinema legend Matthew Sweet: "I hope that it does bring people to Radio 3"
items: The naked truth
items: The art of noise
items: Can we fix it? Yes we can!
items: 'The smell, sound and heat would have seemed a miracle 200 years ago'
items: 'There's nothing like it in the world'
items: Nuts, water and no carbs
items: Attention! Mr Burton is back
items: Educating Yorkshire’s Mr Burton talks show’s return and modern teaching: “I don’t think AI is ever going to be able to replace human teachers”
items: 'The shadow of the book hung over us'

Jo Butterfield on Paris Paralympics heartache: "This isn't a recreational thing for me, it's my job"
type: item
date: 2026-02-24T09:54:55.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Jo Butterfield already has a Paralympic gold medal from Rio 2016. Now, she’s taking to the ice in pursuit of a historic curling win at Milano Cortina.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Some athletes genuinely are astonishing – Jo Butterfield is one of them. When the Paralympics GB mixed curling team takes to the ice in Cortina, she will be attempting to become the first British athlete to win a gold medal at both the Paralympics and the Winter Paralympics. “Nobody’s ever done it and I’d love it to be me,” says Butterfield, talking at the National Curling Academy in Stirling. “It’s a huge opportunity.” Butterfield, who is tetraplegic and uses a wheelchair, won gold in the F51 club throw (the equivalent of the hammer throw for athletes whose legs, trunk and hands are affected) at the Rio Paralympics in 2016. Even if she doesn’t win again in Italy, her life can rightly be regarded a triumph – especially if one considers the physical limitations she works with. “I can use my arms, but I have very little grip in my hands,” she explains. “My thumbs move but that’s about it. I’ve got very little wrist function. If I put my hand above my head, it falls back down.” Then, as she tends to do, Butterfield adds a positive. “But I’ve got good biceps.” The 46-year-old lives in Scotland with her wife Rhiannon but was born in Doncaster. Her mother was a secretary and her father a systems analyst. Brought up with two older brothers, she was “a bit of a tomboy” but not a sports obsessive. After completing a psychology degree at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, she worked at the Ministry of Defence for the next 10 years. “I managed soldiers’ careers, posting people on tours,” she says. “You never did it lightly, you were sending people to risky jobs. Unfortunately, some didn’t come home and some came home seriously injured.” In an irony that doesn’t escape her, Butterfield herself joined the ranks of the seriously injured following an operation to remove a tumour from her spine when she was 31. “I remember waking up paralysed from the operation on 28 January 2011,” she says. “There was a 0.01 per cent chan…

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Three's company
type: item
date: 2026-02-04T18:23:30.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Alex Payne, James Haskell and Mike Tindall, hosts of The Good, the Bad & the Rugby, on community, mental health and the dark side of being in the limelight
encoded: It’s hardly enough for a line-out, and certainly not a scrum. But two big men joined by one smaller man is just the right amount for a very successful podcast. First broadcast in 2020, The Good, the Bad & the Rugby features former England rugby union internationals Mike Tindall and James Haskell, and journalist Alex Payne. Tindall, 47, a centre, was part of the 2003 World Cup-winning team. Haskell, 40, a flanker, famously played with a back injury in England’s 2016 Six Nations grand slam victory against France. Payne, 45, the smaller one, adeptly holds things together. It’s one of the world’s biggest rugby podcasts – the trio now sell out live tours and received the royal seal of approval when they recorded an episode with Princess Anne and the Prince and Princess of Wales at Windsor Castle; something Tindall, who is married to the Princess Royal’s daughter Zara Phillips, called upon family connections to get. “That was special,” he says, when we talk. “Everything I hoped it would be.” Counterintuitively, the show’s success might be down to its comparative lack of rugby minutiae. “We’re not really interested in ruck laws and scrum laws,” says Tindall, “We’re interested in the people. This is a very masculine sport. You have to be a warrior on the field, but you can’t ever show your pain. What we’re trying to do is show that people do have emotions, to peel back a few layers.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2019/11/GettyImages-1023013496-68da3b1.jpg" width="3330" height="1845" alt="NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 24: James Haskell of Northampton Saints looks on during the pre season friendly match between Northampton Saints and Glasgow Warriors at Franklin's Gardens on August 24, 2018 in Northampton, England. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)" title="Northampton Saints v Glasgow Warriors" /> They do this by mixing emotional openness with dressing-room banter. “Some of us are more bombastic than others,” says Tindall, possibly th…

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Six Nations podcasters James Haskell and Mike Tindall talk landing Prince William and Princess Kate as guests on their show
type: item
date: 2026-02-02T17:00:04.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: audio
subject: Rugby Union
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Six Nations
description: Radio Times talks to the stars of The Good, the Bad & the Rugby.
encoded: It’s hardly enough for a line-out, and certainly not a scrum. But two big men joined by one smaller man is just the right amount for a very successful podcast. First broadcast in 2020, The Good, the Bad & the Rugby features former England rugby union internationals Mike Tindall and James Haskell, and journalist Alex Payne. Tindall, 47, a centre, was part of the 2003 World Cup-winning team. Haskell, 40, a flanker, famously played with a back injury in England’s 2016 Six Nations grand slam victory against France. Payne, 45, the smaller one, adeptly holds things together. It’s one of the world’s biggest rugby podcasts – the trio now sell out live tours and received the royal seal of approval when they recorded an episode with Princess Anne and the Prince and Princess of Wales at Windsor Castle; something Tindall, who is married to the Princess Royal’s daughter Zara Phillips, called upon family connections to get. “That was special,” he says, when we talk. “Everything I hoped it would be.” Counterintuitively, the show’s success might be down to its comparative lack of rugby minutiae. “We’re not really interested in ruck laws and scrum laws,” says Tindall, “We’re interested in the people. This is a very masculine sport. "You have to be a warrior on the field, but you can’t ever show your pain. What we’re trying to do is show that people do have emotions, to peel back a few layers.” They do this by mixing emotional openness with dressing-room banter. “Some of us are more bombastic than others,” says Tindall, possibly thinking of Haskell, who arrives late as he has been at a “diversity and inclusion” session. “I learnt workplace banter is absolutely fine,” Haskell says. “As long as it’s not funny, directed at anybody, or says anything of any remote interest.” He’s jesting, I think, and so is Payne when he says, “Working with James for eight years has driven me to a therapist.” As Tindall points out: “James has seen a therapist since he was 17 years old, to try and maximise…

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'It's not always about winning'
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: And yet, with an Olympic medal having eluded him in his career, Dave Ryding is determined to go out on a high
encoded: Add the Winter Olympics 2026 to your watchlist. To see our day-by-day guide of what to watch, click here. High in the Italian Alps, a 39-year-old Englishman is preparing to race. Soon he will lock into his skis, take a deep breath of sharp mountain air and then throw himself down the compacted frozen snow of the Winter Olympics slalom course beneath Monte Vallecetta. When he hurtles towards the finish-line, Dave Ryding will zigzag and turn through a series of gates marked by polymer poles, subjecting his knees and ankles to immense forces, while reaching speeds of 80km an hour. With some understatement Ryding, known as The Rocket, describes this as “quite stressful”. Downhill racing is faster, but slalom is the more technical event where competitors are more likely to make a mistake and crash – with hundreds of cowbell-clanging spectators waiting for him to do just that. “It’s an amazing experience in front of a big crowd,” he says. And frightening? “You learn to perform under pressure, to take the energy from the crowd and not have nerves about it.” When we talk, Ryding has just breakfasted on Greek yoghurt, oats “and blueberries from Aldi”. In summer he grows his own blackcurrants in the Lancashire home he shares with his wife, Dutch skier Mandy Dirkzwager, and their three-year-old daughter, Nina. Ryding, it’s clear, is emphatically not someone who spent months in the Alps every winter. He was brought up near Pendle in Lancashire and, rather than Courchevel, the first time Ryding encountered winter sports it was on the local artificial ski slope – taken there by his father Carl, a ski-mad visionary who sensed, rightly, that his six-year-old son might be good. Carl coached his son on the plastic slope and worked on a market stall in the nearby town of Leyland. “He sold women’s underwear,” says Ryding. “Then he became an industrial cleaner.” When it became increasingly apparent that both Ryding and his younger sister Joanna were talented skiers, Carl retrained as a …

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'I'm happy behind, chasing the pack'
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Great Britain's Charlotte Bankes is already the current World Cup mixed snowboard cross champion, but will this be the year she wins an Olympic medal?
encoded: Add the Winter Olympics 2026 to your watchlist. To see our day-by-day guide of what to watch, click here. Great Britain’s 30-year-old Charlotte Bankes is among the favourites for the snowboard cross event at the Winter Olympics. One of the most exciting alpine sports, Olympic snowboard cross features four riders battling for position on a course between 1,000 and 1,500m long with curved banks (berms), humps and waves that help to launch riders into the air. The current World Cup mixed snowboard cross champion, Bankes’s career is laden with victories but no Olympic title yet. Is this her time? Your family moved from Britain to the French Alps when you were a child, so you initially represented France, until 2018… We didn’t move for snowboarding so much as the possibility of living a more outdoors life, but I feel fortunate they made that decision. Although I’ve grown up in France, I still feel British and feel proud to represent Great Britain. But the local community in France still supports me, so I’ve found the right balance. So, French coffee or British tea bags? I’m fuelled on tea; I probably drink two litres of tea a day. I take a flask with me on the hill so I can have a cup of tea before the start of a race. I’ve also got a kettle for the hotels so I can make a proper cup of tea. I take my own bags of Yorkshire Tea with me. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/01/062MCTTYR-DL-4685953-e1769695172357.jpg" width="7555" height="5040" alt="Week 6 Winter Olympics Charlotte Bankes" title="Charlotte Bankes of Britain, left, and Pia Zerkhold of Austria compete during a quarterfinal of women's snowboard cross at the FIS Snowboard Cross World Cup, a test event for the 2022 Winter Olympics, at the Genting Resort Secret Garden in Zhangjiakou in" /> Do you have a special diet, plenty of protein shakes? No, I don’t like any of that stuff! Riders don’t have to be that careful with what we eat, it’s more about getting a balanced diet that f…

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Snowboarder Charlotte Bankes reveals why she doesn't need to diet and worry about what she eats
type: item
date: 2026-01-26T17:00:36.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "Wherever I am in the race at the Olympics, I won’t give up until I cross that finish line."
encoded: Great Britain’s 30-year-old Charlotte Bankes is among the favourites for the snowboard cross event at the Winter Olympics. One of the most exciting alpine sports, Olympic snowboard cross features four riders battling for position on a course between 1,000 and 1,500m long with curved banks (berms), humps and waves that help to launch riders into the air. The current World Cup mixed snowboard cross champion, Bankes’s career is laden with victories but no Olympic title yet. Is this her time? Your family moved from Britain to the French Alps when you were a child, so you initially represented France, until 2018… We didn’t move for snowboarding so much as the possibility of living a more outdoors life, but I feel fortunate they made that decision. Although I’ve grown up in France, I still feel British and feel proud to represent Great Britain. But the local community in France still supports me, so I’ve found the right balance. So, French coffee or British tea bags? I’m fuelled on tea; I probably drink two litres of tea a day. I take a flask with me on the hill so I can have a cup of tea before the start of a race. I’ve also got a kettle for the hotels so I can make a proper cup of tea. I take my own bags of Yorkshire Tea with me. Do you have a special diet, plenty of protein shakes? No, I don’t like any of that stuff! Riders don’t have to be that careful with what we eat, it’s more about getting a balanced diet that fuels the body properly. I really like a curry. There are certain mornings before races where you’re not that hungry and my go-to is toast and Marmite. Riders can reach speeds of 70km an hour, are you scared of crashes? Fear is there but it makes you concentrate. If you’re riding in a pack with people around, then you really have to focus on your own moves before wondering what the others are doing. You damaged your pelvis in 2011 and then, in 2025, crashed in training — how has that affected you going into these Olympics? My preparation hasn’t been the same…

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Alpine ski racer Dave Ryding talks mental health journey: "I really don't think UK Sport understands"
type: item
date: 2026-01-26T17:00:21.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: With an Olympic medal having eluded him in his career, Dave Ryding is determined to go out on a high.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. High in the Italian Alps, a 39-year-old Englishman is preparing to race. Soon he will lock into his skis, take a deep breath of sharp mountain air and then throw himself down the compacted frozen snow of the Winter Olympics slalom course beneath Monte Vallecetta. When he hurtles towards the finish-line, Dave Ryding will zigzag and turn through a series of gates marked by polymer poles, subjecting his knees and ankles to immense forces, while reaching speeds of 80km an hour. With some understatement Ryding, known as The Rocket, describes this as “quite stressful”. Downhill racing is faster, but slalom is the more technical event where competitors are more likely to make a mistake and crash – with hundreds of cowbell-clanging spectators waiting for him to do just that. “It’s an amazing experience in front of a big crowd,” he says. And frightening? “You learn to perform under pressure, to take the energy from the crowd and not have nerves about it.” Download our free Winter Olympics viewing guide, with a day-by-day TV planner to help you follow every winning moment When we talk, Ryding has just breakfasted on Greek yoghurt, oats “and blueberries from Aldi”. In summer he grows his own blackcurrants in the Lancashire home he shares with his wife, Dutch skier Mandy Dirkzwager, and their three-year-old daughter, Nina. Ryding, it’s clear, is emphatically not someone who spent months in the Alps every winter. He was brought up near Pendle in Lancashire and, rather than Courchevel, the first time Ryding encountered winter sports it was on the local artificial ski slope – taken there by his father Carl, a ski-mad visionary who sensed, rightly, that his six-year-old son might be good. Carl coached his son on the plastic slope and worked on a market stall in the nearby town of Leyland. “He sold women’s underwear,” says Ryding. “Then he became an industrial cleaner.” When it became increasingly apparent that both Ryding and his…

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Time for a change
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: After 27 years of Melvyn Bragg there’s a new host of In Our Time. What will the seemingly modest Misha Glenny bring to the table?
encoded: In Our Time is on at 9am on Thursday on Radio 4. Add it to your collection Misha Glenny really didn’t expect to get this job. “I was astonished, flabbergasted, absolutely thrilled,” he says of his appointment as presenter of In Our Time. In bagging the role, Glenny follows Melvyn Bragg, who presented the programme from 1998 to 2025. “This is one of the crown jewels of Radio 4 and Melvyn is such a towering figure,” Glenny says when we meet in Broadcasting House. “It’s an immense privilege and honour to be asked to take it on.” Like many of the two million listeners keen to feed their curiosity, there was one episode that hooked Glenny; the “absolutely brilliant” January 2008 programme on plate tectonics. “I was late and rushing to get out of the house but just had to listen to the end. The conclusion was that without tectonic plates there would be no life. Who knew?” Intrigued, Glenny later told BBC executives he’d want the job if it ever came up, but claims he wasn’t a shoo-in. “No, not anointed at all. The selection process included making a pilot and for three months I assumed I wasn’t going to get the job.” The 67-year-old already presents The Invention of… series on Radio 4 and until recently was Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. Glenny also wrote the 2008 non-fiction book McMafia, which became a BBC drama series starring James Norton, and won a Sony Gold Award for his radio reporting in central and eastern Europe in the early 1990s. He says he’d like more Russian literature on the show. So, what else might change? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but the show might benefit from another guest, or one less,” he teases. He’d also like to tilt towards In Our Time’s many younger listeners: “It’s one of the most popular Radio 4 shows with the under-35s and that’s very important.” Mainly, Glenny says, he wants a smooth transition, so “people can build a similar confidence in me as they had with Melvyn. Frank Skinner said Melvyn acts like an ‘intel…

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Misha Glenny reveals his wife Kirsty Lang’s advice as he replaces Melvyn Bragg for Our Time
type: item
date: 2026-01-14T08:00:07.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: audio
subject: BBC
description: From flabbergasted fan to the chair once occupied by Melvyn Bragg: Misha Glenny on inheriting Radio 4’s crown jewel – and why depth still matters in a distracted age.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Misha Glenny really didn't expect to get this job. "I was astonished, flabbergasted, absolutely thrilled," he says of his appointment as presenter of In Our Time. In bagging the role, Glenny follows Melvyn Bragg, who presented the programme from 1998 to 2025. "This is one of the crown jewels of Radio 4 and Melvyn is such a towering figure," Glenny says when we meet in Broadcasting House. "It's an immense privilege and honour to be asked to take it on." Like many of the two million listeners keen to feed their curiosity, there was one episode that hooked Glenny; the "absolutely brilliant" January 2008 programme on plate tectonics. "I was late and rushing to get out of the house but just had to listen to the end. The conclusion was that without tectonic plates there would be no life. Who knew?" Intrigued, Glenny later told BBC executives he'd want the job if it ever came up, but claims he wasn't a shoo-in. "No, not anointed at all. The selection process included making a pilot and for three months I assumed I wasn't going to get the job." The 67-year-old already presents The Invention of… series on Radio 4 and until recently was Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. Glenny also wrote the 2008 non-fiction book McMafia, which became a BBC drama series starring James Norton, and won a Sony Gold Award for his radio reporting in central and eastern Europe in the early 1990s. He says he'd like more Russian literature on the show. So, what else might change? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it, but the show might benefit from another guest, or one less," he teases. He'd also like to tilt towards In Our Time's many younger listeners: "It's one of the most popular Radio 4 shows with the under-35s and that's very important." Mainly, Glenny says, he wants a smooth transition, so "people can build a similar confidence in me as they had with Melvyn. Frank Skinner said Melvyn acts like an 'intellectual sheepdog'. Tha…

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Let the music play
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Paul Bettany likes to go full throttle – whether it’s as Mozart’s nemesis Salieri or at a New Year’s Eve gig with friends
encoded: Amadeus is on 21 December-Christmas Day 9.00pm Sky Atlantic. Add it to your watchlist Paul Bettany is far from being too cool for Yule. “I love Christmas so much,” he enthuses in advance of the festive celebrations at his home in the USA. “Our Christmas Day is a very English affair with crackers and turkey, and then, when people start showing up after Boxing Day, the party just continues. Last year we had 40 people.” Bettany, co-star of Amadeus, Sky Atlantic’s five-part adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, lives with his wife, actor Jennifer Connolly, in a timber house in rural Vermont, New England, where “it snows every year”. So, the 54-year-old London-born actor will be having a picturesque Christmas – but also a loud one. “I have a band room with drums and piano and PA system and loads of guitars. Lots of people come up and play. We do a gig on New Year’s Eve.” You might be thinking, rather him than me. But Bettany likes to go at things full throttle, whether that’s entertaining friends at Christmas or in his performance as the scheming court composer Salieri in Amadeus, who dedicates his life to destroying Mozart. It’s one of those roles where Bettany, who has lived in America since 2003, pops back to the UK to remind us just how good he is. He did it before in 2021 when he played the alcoholic Duke of Argyll in the period drama A Very British Scandal. Now he’s facing off with Will Sharpe’s Mozart in 18th-century Vienna; an arrangement Bettany is charmed by. “I have enormous admiration for Will. He’s funny, gentle and kind – an attractive combination and rare. Usually, actors are working out how they can triumph against the opposition rather than how to make each other better.” Bettany is a thoughtful, compelling actor; even as android superhero The Vision in the Marvel universe where, since 2015, he has been wearing a catsuit and firing lasers out of his forehead. He does this so convincingly I ask him to explain what it feels like. “I have no frame of ref…

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You’re ho, ho, hired?
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: As 12 celebrities brave the Apprentice boardroom, Lord Sugar says it won't just be chestnuts that he’ll be roasting this Christmas
encoded: The Celebrity Apprentice is on 29 and 30 December 9.00pm BBC One. Add it to your watchlist Merry Christmas, Sugar Claus! If you were Father Christmas, which public figures would you put on your naughty list? I would have to say no comment on this whatsoever, my friend. As you will know, the BBC has guidelines. I have to keep my big mouth shut and not make personal or political comments like that. In that case, can we assume the contestants in your Celebrity Apprentice Christmas specials went straight on the nice list? Nah! That’s the excitement of it. Most of the time, they’re schmoozed by everybody, told how marvellous they are. Then they get a gig where I’m telling them what a load of rubbish they are. They’re masochists, really. Still, it’s worth remembering they don’t get paid anything at all. They do it for charity and that is very, very commendable. What will you be making the brave contestants do in the two festive episodes? They’re going up to Lapland and meeting Father Christmas. There was snow and ice, as you can imagine, reindeers and sledges. The contestants were split into two teams and each team had to create a special Christmas biscuit. Then they came back to London and presented their biscuits to big supermarkets and the best biscuit won. The interesting thing is, for the first time ever, the products created in the programme are actually going on sale in the supermarkets. All the money is going to Children in Need. Does the show create its own celebrities now? Did you decide whether Thomas Skinner could come back as a “celebrity”? I’m not sure over the 20 years how many people who have appeared on my show have actually made a name for themselves. I can think of maybe three: Saira Khan did quite well, then Katie Hopkins, who everybody loves to hate, and Thomas Skinner, who ended up on Strictly. But I don’t have any input. I’m presented with these celebrities; the BBC seek these people out and find them. And it’s not easy, because you can imagine that…

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'I feel free'
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: With 007 firmly in the past, Daniel Craig is glorying in unconventional roles in Knives Out and Narnia
encoded: Wake Up Dead Man is on Netflix from 12 December. Add it to your watchlist "I am hoping to get out of Narnia in time for Christmas,” says Daniel Craig. We’re supposed to be talking about the former James Bond star’s performance as Benoit Blanc, the mannered, sometimes manic, private detective from the Deep South of the US in Rian Johnson’s Netflix Knives Out mysteries. The new film, Wake Up Dead Man, is set in and around a neo-Gothic church in upstate New York where Benoit enlists the help of Josh O’Connor’s Catholic priest Father Jud Duplenticy to solve “a classic impossible crime”. But Craig’s mind is already a movie ahead of me. He’s presently filming The Magician’s Nephew, Greta Gerwig’s take on CS Lewis’s Narnia novel, in which he plays the eponymous magician, Uncle Andrew. It’s a role as un-Bond-like, in its way, as the unhinged gay author he played in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer last year (based on William Burroughs). Or, for that matter, Blanc, the driving intellectual and dramatic force of Johnson’s three Knives Out films. “I suppose I started freeing myself up from any convention,” says the 57-year-old Craig. “I’m not saying no to things that I might have been a little bit wary about before. When the Bond thing was going on in my life, the juxtaposition between that and another role would sometimes feel self-conscious. I’m working harder than I ever have, but I’m also just enjoying it more than I ever have. I get to do really interesting, different stuff.” No Time to Die was in 2021. That’s four years away from Bond now; has it made him happy? “I love my job but does it make me happy? Not always,” he muses. “It’s very complicated. It’s an incredibly tough job. It’s kept me away from my family over the years, and that has its downsides.” Craig is married to the actor Rachel Weisz. They have a daughter, Grace, born in 2018 (Craig has another daughter, 33-year-old actor Ella Loudon, from his previous marriage to actor Fiona Loudon) and homes in north London and Ne…

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Wake Up Dead Man cast reveal their favourite detectives and whether they’d make good murderers
type: item
date: 2025-12-11T17:01:22.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: Movies
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: Daniel Craig and the Wake Up Dead Man cast talk perfect murders, imperfect detectives and everything in between.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “I am hoping to get out of Narnia in time for Christmas,” says Daniel Craig. We’re supposed to be talking about the former James Bond star’s performance as Benoit Blanc, the mannered, sometimes manic, private detective from the Deep South of the US in Rian Johnson’s Netflix Knives Out mysteries. The new film, Wake Up Dead Man, is set in and around a neo-Gothic church in upstate New York where Benoit enlists the help of Josh O’Connor’s Catholic priest Father Jud Duplenticy to solve “a classic impossible crime”. But Craig’s mind is already a movie ahead of me. He’s presently filming The Magician’s Nephew, Greta Gerwig’s take on CS Lewis’s Narnia novel, in which he plays the eponymous magician, Uncle Andrew. It’s a role as un-Bond-like, in its way, as the unhinged gay author he played in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer last year (based on William Burroughs). Or, for that matter, Blanc, the driving intellectual and dramatic force of Johnson’s three Knives Out films. “I suppose I started freeing myself up from any convention,” says the 57-year-old Craig. “I’m not saying no to things that I might have been a little bit wary about before. When the Bond thing was going on in my life, the juxtaposition between that and another role would sometimes feel self-conscious. I’m working harder than I ever have, but I’m also just enjoying it more than I ever have. I get to do really interesting, different stuff.” No Time to Die was in 2021. That’s four years away from Bond now; has it made him happy? “I love my job but does it make me happy? Not always,” he muses. “It’s very complicated. It’s an incredibly tough job. It’s kept me away from my family over the years, and that has its downsides.” View Green Video on the source website Craig is married to the actor Rachel Weisz. They have a daughter, Grace, born in 2018 (Craig has another daughter, 33-year-old actor Ella Loudon, from his previous marriage to actor Fiona Loudon) and homes in n…

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Lord Alan Sugar dishes on Celebrity Apprentice and why he allowed Thomas Skinner to return for it
type: item
date: 2025-12-09T17:01:37.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: Entertainment
subject: Reality TV
subject: TV
subject: BBC iPlayer
subject: BBC One
subject: Christmas
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: From Lapland tasks to childhood chestnuts, Lord Sugar reveals what makes a very Apprentice-style Christmas.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Merry Christmas, Sugar Claus! If you were Father Christmas, which public figures would you put on your naughty list? I would have to say no comment on this whatsoever, my friend. As you will know, the BBC has guidelines. I have to keep my big mouth shut and not make personal or political comments like that. In that case, can we assume the contestants in your Celebrity Apprentice Christmas specials went straight on the nice list? Nah! That’s the excitement of it. Most of the time, they’re schmoozed by everybody, told how marvellous they are. Then they get a gig where I’m telling them what a load of rubbish they are. They’re masochists, really. Still, it’s worth remembering they don’t get paid anything at all. They do it for charity and that is very, very commendable. What will you be making the brave contestants do in the two festive episodes? They’re going up to Lapland and meeting Father Christmas. There was snow and ice, as you can imagine, reindeers and sledges. The contestants were split into two teams and each team had to create a special Christmas biscuit. Then they came back to London and presented their biscuits to big supermarkets and the best biscuit won. The interesting thing is, for the first time ever, the products created in the programme are actually going on sale in the supermarkets. All the money is going to Children in Need. Does the show create its own celebrities now? Did you decide whether Thomas Skinner could come back as a “celebrity”? I’m not sure over the 20 years how many people who have appeared on my show have actually made a name for themselves. I can think of maybe three: Saira Khan did quite well, then Katie Hopkins, who everybody loves to hate, and Thomas Skinner, who ended up on Strictly. But I don’t have any input. I’m presented with these celebrities; the BBC seek these people out and find them. And it’s not easy, because you can imagine that some of them are working and can’t ta…

Amadeus star Paul Bettany reveals how a fan's selfie intruded on a tragic family moment
type: item
date: 2025-12-08T17:01:50.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: NOW
subject: Sky
description: Paul Bettany on how he balances Hollywood fame with family fun in Vermont.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Paul Bettany is far from being too cool for Yule. “I love Christmas so much,” he enthuses in advance of the festive celebrations at his home in the USA. “Our Christmas Day is a very English affair with crackers and turkey, and then, when people start showing up after Boxing Day, the party just continues. Last year we had 40 people.” Bettany, co-star of Amadeus, Sky Atlantic’s five-part adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, lives with his wife, actor Jennifer Connolly, in a timber house in rural Vermont, New England, where “it snows every year”. So, the 54-year-old London-born actor will be having a picturesque Christmas – but also a loud one. “I have a band room with drums and piano and PA system and loads of guitars. Lots of people come up and play. We do a gig on New Year’s Eve.” You might be thinking, rather him than me. But Bettany likes to go at things full throttle, whether that’s entertaining friends at Christmas or in his performance as the scheming court composer Salieri in Amadeus, who dedicates his life to destroying Mozart. It’s one of those roles where Bettany, who has lived in America since 2003, pops back to the UK to remind us just how good he is. He did it before in 2021 when he played the alcoholic Duke of Argyll in the period drama A Very British Scandal. Now he’s facing off with Will Sharpe’s Mozart in 18th-century Vienna; an arrangement Bettany is charmed by. “I have enormous admiration for Will. He’s funny, gentle and kind – an attractive combination and rare. Usually, actors are working out how they can triumph against the opposition rather than how to make each other better.” Bettany is a thoughtful, compelling actor; even as android superhero The Vision in the Marvel universe where, since 2015, he has been wearing a catsuit and firing lasers out of his forehead. He does this so convincingly I ask him to explain what it feels like. “I have no frame of reference for laser beams coming out…

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'It's not a whodunnit!'
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Daniel Craig is back as detective Benoit Blanc in his third Knives Out film – a baffling locked-room mystery with an all-star cast. But Craig insists that it can't be labelled the same as the last previous two…
encoded: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is in cinemas from 26 November and on Netflix from 12 November. Add it to your watchlist There’s a bit of everything in Benoit.” Daniel Craig is pondering the inspiration for his performance as the eccentric gentleman-detective Benoit Blanc in writer/director Rian Johnson’s Knives Out movies. “Peter Ustinov’s Poirot from Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun is there, but also Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express, which is ridiculous but kind of glorious. Like every other actor, I’m a magpie. I think, ‘I’ll have a bit of that.’” Blanc’s southern drawl and mannered bearing, his penchant for ramping up the dramatic tension as he reveals who has committed the crime, his moral outrage and, perhaps as important, his elegant tailoring, were first seen in writer-director Johnson’s Knives Out, the meticulously plotted 2019 Netflix film that channelled the Agatha Christie golden age of crime into contemporary America. That reinvention of the genre was a huge success – so successful, in fact, that there was some disappointment when the second film in the series, 2022’s Glass Onion, featured tricksy exploding sets and slightly overdone performances. Including, some said, Craig’s. “There was criticism that I was over the top,” he says, as RT spends a day with the cast ahead of the release of the third instalment in the franchise, Wake Up Dead Man. “But I always try and remind people, that’s what he was supposed to be. The whole point of the movie was that Benoit Blanc was a caricature of himself, he was attempting to disarm these awful people.” Still, there are no worries about tone in Wake Up Dead Man. This is a scorching return to form, aided by Johnson’s decision to swap affectations like Glass Onion’s sun-drenched billionaire island for a dark American-gothic setting, with Epping Forest in Essex standing in for upstate New York. There is also a standout performance to put alongside 57-year-old Craig’s. Previously best known…

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Wake Up Dead Man cast reveal Knives Out film's relevance to "scary times" we live in – and who has pitched a return for a sequel
type: item
date: 2025-11-28T17:01:06.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: Movies
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "These movies are not whodunnits," says Daniel Craig. "Those are the worst kind of movies."
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “There’s a bit of everything in Benoit.” Daniel Craig is pondering the inspiration for his performance as the eccentric gentleman-detective Benoit Blanc in writer/director Rian Johnson’s Knives Out movies. “Peter Ustinov’s Poirot from Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun is there, but also Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express, which is ridiculous but kind of glorious. Like every other actor, I’m a magpie. I think, ‘I’ll have a bit of that.’” Blanc’s southern drawl and mannered bearing, his penchant for ramping up the dramatic tension as he reveals who has committed the crime, his moral outrage and, perhaps as important, his elegant tailoring, were first seen in writer-director Johnson’s Knives Out, the meticulously plotted 2019 Netflix film that channelled the Agatha Christie golden age of crime into contemporary America. That reinvention of the genre was a huge success – so successful, in fact, that there was some disappointment when the second film in the series, 2022’s Glass Onion, featured tricksy exploding sets and slightly overdone performances. Including, some said, Craig’s. “There was criticism that I was over the top,” he says, as RT spends a day with the cast ahead of the release of the third instalment in the franchise, Wake Up Dead Man. “But I always try and remind people, that’s what he was supposed to be. The whole point of the movie was that Benoit Blanc was a caricature of himself, he was attempting to disarm these awful people.” Still, there are no worries about tone in Wake Up Dead Man. This is a scorching return to form, aided by Johnson’s decision to swap affectations like Glass Onion’s sun-drenched billionaire island for a dark American-gothic setting, with Epping Forest in Essex standing in for upstate New York. There is also a standout performance to put alongside 57-year-old Craig’s. Previously best known in the UK for playing Larry in The Durrells and Prince Charles in The Cro…

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Screen shot
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Edith Bowman is now the voice of Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema — and insists it’s not dumbing down
encoded: Sound of Cinema is on Radio 3 at 4pm on Saturday. Add it to your collection Sound of Cinema has a new voice. After 12 years, presenter Matthew Sweet, who devised the show and established it as a bastion of quirky enquiry, has left to be replaced by Edith Bowman. On the evidence of her first few shows, Bowman is less likely to wander down alleyways than Sweet. New features like Harmonising Hollywood and a playlist that, so far, prioritises music like the pulsing electro-scapes of Oppenheimer’s Ludwig Göransson, feel like a turn to the mainstream. “No, I don’t think that’s the case at all,” she objects vigorously. “It’s not a case of dumbing down something, if that’s what you’re implying. It’s about really showing the breadth of what’s out there. And that’s not always necessarily something classical. It can be much more contemporary.” Bowman has fronted Cinematic Sound-tracks at Radio 3 Unwind since 2024 and presents Soundtracking, a film and music podcast that attracts big names, like Steven Spielberg. After talking to him, Bowman says, “I burst into tears and went, ‘I’ve just spoken to Steven Spielberg!’” Now 50, Bowman was brought up in Anstruther on the Fife coast, where her parents had a hotel and, like many people, she discovered scored orchestral music through film. “My dad bought a projector and he ran this little film club on a Saturday morning,” she says. “I would sit with him, be his little assistant and make membership cards for people. He showed things like Bugsy Malone, but the John Williams suites for Star Wars, ET and Raiders of the Lost Ark are the ones that I really remember.” She went on to work at MTV, C4, Virgin Radio, Radio 1, Radio 2, 5Live and Radio 6 Music, her resilience overcoming several setbacks. “We can’t put someone with an accent like yours on the radio,” someone told her during work experience at Radio Forth. “I was swallowing back tears,” she says. “But then with each of these things you build a thicker skin.” Later, Bowman would be d…

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The magic of Mozart
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe are bringing the composer’s story to life with divine intervention – and stunt strawberries
encoded: Add Amadeus to your watchlist To paraphrase 1980s Austrian pop singer Falco: “Amadeus, Amadeus, let me shock you, Amadeus”. That’s to say, Sky’s five-part series, which flits between concert theatre, Imperial palace and brothel, contains some very naughty scenes. One particular encounter, on top of a (literally) groaning buffet, may or may not be narratively essential, but it’s certainly sexually ingenious. Was that really a strawberry? I ask co-stars Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany. “Oh, yes,” says Sharpe. “A stunt strawberry,” adds Bettany. Based on Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play of the same name, Amadeus takes place in late 18th-century Vienna, where Antonio Salieri (Bettany) is court composer to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Joseph II. At the very height of his profession, the religiously devout Salieri is nonetheless plagued by one doubt: is he any good? As if to confirm his fears, along comes young genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Sharpe), who is escaping his overbearing father in Salzburg and intent on having a good time in the capital of the Habsburg Empire. Salieri is the one who kneels before the cross, the composer who dedicates himself to the Almighty. Yet it is Mozart, dedicated to orgies and wine, who writes music of divine beauty. Infuriated by God’s practical joke, Salieri sets out to secretly destroy Mozart. Both actors are called upon to conduct and play the piano. “Will did an extraordinary job with his piano playing,” says Bettany. “I was more obsessed with the conducting, and specifically conducting the Requiem. It was an amazing feeling. A strange feeling of power.” The Requiem Mass in D Minor, Mozart’s last work, is “exquisite” says Bettany, but is it actually coming from God? “Well, I had to believe it was,” says Sharpe. “There were occasionally mad things that happened during filming. We’d shoot a scene where Mozart mentions God in some way, and then the moment I say ‘God,’ there’s a huge thunderclap, lightning through the window, like it was theatric…

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Amadeus stars Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe talk Mozart drama's 'woke' accusations and the "strange" power of conducting
type: item
date: 2025-11-24T17:01:30.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: NOW
subject: Sky
description: Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe are bringing the composer's story to life with divine intervention – and stunt strawberries.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. To paraphrase 1980s Austrian pop singer Falco: “Amadeus, Amadeus, let me shock you, Amadeus”. That’s to say, Sky’s five-part series, which flits between concert theatre, Imperial palace and brothel, contains some very naughty scenes. One particular encounter, on top of a (literally) groaning buffet, may or may not be narratively essential, but it’s certainly sexually ingenious. Was that really a strawberry? I ask co-stars Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany. “Oh, yes,” says Sharpe. “A stunt strawberry,” adds Bettany. Based on Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play of the same name, Amadeus takes place in late 18th-century Vienna, where Antonio Salieri (Bettany) is court composer to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Joseph II. At the very height of his profession, the religiously devout Salieri is nonetheless plagued by one doubt: is he any good? As if to confirm his fears, along comes young genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Sharpe), who is escaping his overbearing father in Salzburg and intent on having a good time in the capital of the Habsburg Empire. Salieri is the one who kneels before the cross, the composer who dedicates himself to the Almighty. Yet it is Mozart, dedicated to orgies and wine, who writes music of divine beauty. Infuriated by God’s practical joke, Salieri sets out to secretly destroy Mozart. Both actors are called upon to conduct and play the piano. “Will did an extraordinary job with his piano playing,” says Bettany. “I was more obsessed with the conducting, and specifically conducting the Requiem. It was an amazing feeling. A strange feeling of power.” The Requiem Mass in D Minor, Mozart’s last work, is “exquisite” says Bettany, but is it actually coming from God? “Well, I had to believe it was,” says Sharpe. “There were occasionally mad things that happened during filming. We’d shoot a scene where Mozart mentions God in some way, and then the moment I say ‘God,’ there’s a huge thunderclap, lightning through the windo…

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height: 6336

Edith Bowman opens up about replacing Sound of Cinema legend Matthew Sweet: "I hope that it does bring people to Radio 3"
type: item
date: 2025-11-24T17:00:49.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: audio
subject: TV
subject: BBC Radio 3
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Edith Bowman is now the voice of Radio 3's Sound of Cinema – and insists it's not dumbing down.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Sound of Cinema has a new voice. After 12 years, presenter Matthew Sweet, who devised the show and established it as a bastion of quirky enquiry, has left to be replaced by Edith Bowman. On the evidence of her first few shows, Bowman is less likely to wander down alleyways than Sweet. New features like Harmonising Hollywood and a playlist that, so far, prioritises music like the pulsing electro-scapes of Oppenheimer’s Ludwig Göransson, feel like a turn to the mainstream. “No, I don’t think that’s the case at all,” she objects vigorously. “It’s not a case of dumbing down something, if that’s what you’re implying. It’s about really showing the breadth of what’s out there. And that’s not always necessarily something classical. It can be much more contemporary.” Bowman has fronted Cinematic Sound-tracks at Radio 3 Unwind since 2024 and presents Soundtracking, a film and music podcast that attracts big names, like Steven Spielberg. After talking to him, Bowman says, “I burst into tears and went, ‘I’ve just spoken to Steven Spielberg!’” Now 50, Bowman was brought up in Anstruther on the Fife coast, where her parents had a hotel and, like many people, she discovered scored orchestral music through film. “My dad bought a projector and he ran this little film club on a Saturday morning,” she says. “I would sit with him, be his little assistant and make membership cards for people. He showed things like Bugsy Malone, but the John Williams suites for Star Wars, ET and Raiders of the Lost Ark are the ones that I really remember.” She went on to work at MTV, C4, Virgin Radio, Radio 1, Radio 2, 5Live and Radio 6 Music, her resilience overcoming several setbacks. “We can’t put someone with an accent like yours on the radio,” someone told her during work experience at Radio Forth. “I was swallowing back tears,” she says. “But then with each of these things you build a thicker skin.” Later, Bowman would be disappointed again when …

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The naked truth
type: item
subject: App
subject: App features
description: A new documentary unveils artist JMW Turner’s secret passion for erotic sketches – and how critics wanted to erase them from history
encoded: Add Turner – the Secret Sketchbooks to your watchlist Think of the 19th-century Romantic artist JMW Turner and three famous images force their way into your mind: the locomotive hurtling out of the mist in Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway; the swirl of grey, white and black in Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth and the wooden hulk of The Fighting Temeraire being towed to the shipbreakers by a funnelled steamer, voted Britain’s greatest painting in a BBC poll in 2005. You almost certainly won’t be thinking of the bottoms, boobs or other body parts that appear in Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks, a new BBC documentary that features Timothy Spall – who starred in Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr Turner – Chris Packham, Rolling Stone and painter Ronnie Wood and Tracey Emin. As Emin says of the remarkable sketches: “There’s a shape that looks like an erect penis with veins. I mean, it’s really over the top. And then there’s a woman reclining with her legs slightly up and her feet crossed as if she’s in some frozen ecstasy.” This might not be the Turner you imagined, yet the erotic sketches, being seen for the first time on television, have always been there, lurking in the huge tranche of 37,000 sketches the artist left to the nation on his death aged 76 in 1851, along with almost 300 oil paintings, collectively known as the Turner Bequest. But when the erotic sketches were discovered, the effect was dismay. Victorian writer Frank Harris gasped, “The pudenda of women, utterly inexcusable.” Horrified art historian John Ruskin, until then Turner’s fervent supporter, wrote to the National Gallery, where the Bequest was initially kept, asking that the “obscene drawings” were burnt as they had been “assuredly drawn under a certain condition of insanity”. For Emin, Ruskin could hardly be more wrong. “There is nothing obscene that I’m looking at here,” she says of the luminous works. Ruskin, who famously failed to consummate his marriage to the pre-Raphaelite …

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The art of noise
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Oscar-winning composer Anne Dudley has lived her life in music, from classical to TV scores. But she knew to stay silent when Poldark took off his togs
encoded: New Music Show is on Radio 3 at 10.30pm on Saturday. Add it to your collection If the composer Anne Dudley has one regret it’s that Aidan Turner’s shirtless scything in Poldark, a scene that set the nation a-quiver and which she calls “one of the most famous moments in television” is almost entirely dialogue-free. That means it didn’t require her to write any extra score – a creative process that would have required multiple viewings. “So, I didn’t get to see it about 50 times,” she says, “like I usually do.” Otherwise, the 69-year-old has a lot to be happy about. She has provided music for many television shows and films as well as Poldark, including American History X, The Crying Game and The Full Monty, for which she won an Oscar. Other awards include two Brits, a Grammy and an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. These are remarkable achievements for a woman who came from an ordinary household in Plumstead in south London where she loved the soundtrack to the 1960s children’s series The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, listened to her dad’s 78s – “He liked classical music with a tune and quite frankly, who doesn’t?” – and absorbed 60s and 70s pop on the radio. “I don’t want to sound like an old fogey going, ‘Pop music was much better in my day’, but the thing is, it’s true.” Now Dudley is receiving one of the greatest accolades that the British music industry can give, becoming the 33rd Ivors Academy Fellow and joining the ranks of Kate Bush, Sir Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Dame Judith Weir, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir James MacMillan. “Just to be mentioned in the same breath as those people is a huge honour,” she says. Dudley is being recognised for body of music that stretches from composing the shimmering 2022 cantata One Touch of Nature to arranging for Rod Stewart and Tina Turner. But her career began inauspiciously one night in the late 70s at Tiffany’s nightclub in Wimbledon when, fresh from the Royal College of Music, Dudley …

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Can we fix it? Yes we can!
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: A bespoke radio station is hammering preconceptions about builders — and filling a serious gap in the market
encoded: Hard hats on, hi-vis zipped up,” comes the portentous announcement. “The builders’ station on mornings means… the Bald Builders!” It’s 6.06 am and Fix Radio is kicking off the day with star presenters Brad and Sam, famous in the construction trade as the Bald Builders. Two men with shiny heads, beards and intricate arm tattoos, who deliver three hours of on-air geezerish good cheer to a comm-unity that needs it more than you might think. Poor old builders, so often the butt of jokes. They have builders’ bums and builders’ tea to put up with but also, more worryingly, tool theft, unpaid bills and, increasingly, mental health issues. No wonder they’ve formed a broadcasting huddle and now have their own station. Fix Radio was launched in 2017 in the London area by then 23-year-old Louis Timpany who, after leaving Leeds University, went to work on construction sites and noticed a gap in the market. Builders – as you’ll know if your neighbours are having a dormer window put in right now – listen to the radio all day. But where was the station directed at them, the station where companies that sell things to builders could access their market directly? Eight years on, Fix Radio broadcasts nationally and delivers ultra-focused advertising slots for builders’ merchant chains and van manufacturers, reaching more than 800,000 listeners a week. It’s a small but burgeoning broadcasting phenomenon and to find out more, I’ve joined Fix’s community of listeners, many of whom, if their messages to the station are to be believed, have names like Guys and Dolls characters. I’m thinking, particularly, of Mickey the Squeak, doing “second fix joinery” in Yorkshire. Perhaps Mickey was in the crowd at this year’s inaugural FixFest. The one-day music festival in West Sussex had the expected commercial linkups with power tool makers and trade suppliers but also offered vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free food stalls for hungry plumbers. Not quite what you imagined? Nor me, but, as Brad makes …

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'The smell, sound and heat would have seemed a miracle 200 years ago'
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Train enthusiast Petroc Trelawny can’t wait for Radio 3’s day-long celebration of locomotion — but, he warns Michael Hodges, don’t play music in his quiet carriage
encoded: Train Tracks is on from 7.30am, Saturday on Radio 3. Add it to your collection Petroc Trelawny’s scarlet neck scarf Station, closely followed by his rakish grey quiff and beaming face. “Isn’t it amazing!” the 54-year-old says as the green hulk of Eddystone, a West Country class locomotive built in 1946, shunts past us on the platform. RT is trainspotting with the Radio 3 presenter and he’s right; as JK Rowling, Hercule Poirot and Jenny Agutter all know, steam engines have immense evocative power. “I’m passionate about them,” says Trelawny when we retire, at his suggestion, to the station’s Clermont Hotel, a surviving example of the grand establish- ments that used to make rail travel so enticing if you could afford it. “The smell, the sound, the heat coming from the boiler; the idea of someone shovelling coal into this spitting oven that heats water and drives the train forward. All that would have seemed a miracle when the first passengers were taken across open country 200 years ago.” Trelawny is referring to the momentous day, 27 September 1825, when George Stephenson’s Stockton to Darlington route opened with a journey by a train pulled by Locomotion No 1, becoming Britain’s – and the world’s – first passenger railway service. That journey, along with the following 200 years of British train travel, will be marked by Radio 3 on Saturday with Train Tracks, a day-long celebration of the bicentenary of our railways, with a unique live broad- cast on London North Eastern Railway’s (LNER) Highland Chieftain express service, travelling from mountains to metropolis. This is not a steam service, but one pulled by an technology inspired by Japanese bullet trains. Trelawny begins broadcasting at 7.30am at Inverness, then continues on the 7.55 King’s Cross service, which will have a dedicated studio carriage. There will be live performances, radio premieres of works commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Unfolding Landscapes by Erland Cooper and All Change! b…

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'There's nothing like it in the world'
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Stepping down after 27 years and more than 1,000 episodes, Melvyn Bragg is leaving In Our Time behind – but what does the future hold for the veteran broadcaster?
encoded: Speaking to Melvyn Bragg the day after the announcement that he will be calling time on In Our Time, the much-celebrated Radio 4 ideas programme that he has presented since its creation in 1998, I don’t know whether to congratulate him on a sensational innings or plead that he reconsider. “I feel the same myself,” the 85-year-old broadcaster says. “But, one way or another, we’ve all got to go sometime. And I just thought, I’ll go now. I’ll go before I’m pushed, I suppose.” Hopefully, there were no plans to push Lord Bragg out. Certainly, Radio 4 controller Mohit Bakaya was lavish in his praise after Bragg announced his departure, saying, “His fierce intellect, coupled with a wonderful curiosity and extraordinary passion for knowledge, marks him out as one of the broadcasting greats.” Bakaya is right; Bragg’s show, where leading academics are brought together to discuss a wide spread of subjects – episodes have included explorations of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the evolution of crocodiles and Ovid’s Metamorphoses – in ways ordinary listeners can understand, is the epitome of the Reithian ideal. “So many people have written in, saying, ‘I went to a state school, I didn’t know this, I didn’t know that, but this is providing education,’” says Bragg. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am about that. It’s immeasurable; it’s worth my whole broadcasting career.” In Our Time has also offered the BBC much-needed credibility when it has often been accused of dumbing down. In an age of anti-science conspiracy theories on social media and campaigns against “experts”, it has been a counterbalance to the sidelining of genuine intellectual curiosity. “I hope so,” says Bragg. “Because that is disastrous, utterly stupid and destructive. It’s disappointing that quite a bit of our public life is ignorant – but we’re not ignorant.” Back in 1998, the BBC told Bragg – who had been obliged to leave his berth at Start the Week when he entered the House of Lords as a Labour peer – tha…

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Nuts, water and no carbs
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: British soprano Louise Alder reveals how she’s preparing to take command of the stage at the Last Night of the Proms
encoded: The Last Night of the Proms is on Saturday at 7pm on Radio 3. Add it to your collection Millions of radio ears and television eyes will be upon soprano Louise Alder when she sings Rule, Britannia! at the Last Night of the Proms this Saturday. A nerve-racking prospect for many, but when she walks on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, Alder’s focus will primarily be on mastering the enormous space. “You look out from the centre of that stage and it’s mind-blowing,” she says. “You’re singing into a chasm initially, so you must project. The Prommers are close, yet there are people far away, right up in the gallery.” The 38-year-old has previously sung West Side Story, Strauss and Mozart at the Proms, but her relationship with the world’s greatest classical music festival began dramatically in 2014. While on holiday in Thailand, she answered a phone call from Glyndebourne Festival Opera. They were taking Der Rosenkavalier to the Albert Hall, but the singer playing romantic lead Sophie had fallen ill; Alder was straight on the plane. “I made several debuts that night,” she recalls. “My company debut, Proms debut, London Philharmonic Orchestra debut and Radio 3 debut.” After that, I suggest, Alder must be used to big pressure moments at the venue. “I don’t think you get used to the Royal Albert Hall,” she points out firmly. “Not ever.” Her day will begin with a photo call and then last rehearsals. She’ll avoid heavy carbs – “they make you feel horrendous and sleepy after an hour and a half” – snacking on nuts instead and drinking a lot of water. “I drink all the time,” she says. “We singers have to go to the loo a lot.” After that it will be her, a sea of flags and a very public chance to shine. Alder, who won the audience prize at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 2017 and is the state school-educated daughter of a violinist mother and opera-singer father, was surprised when she got the Proms call. “I thought, ‘My God. I’m Louise, I grew up in Wimbledon. They’ve…

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Attention! Mr Burton is back
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Twelve years ago, inspirational teacher Matthew Burton became the breakout star of a reality TV series set in a Yorkshire school. Now he’s returning to teach pupils (and us) more valuable life lessons
encoded: Add Educating Yorkshire to your watchlist Remember when Yorkshire and its magnificent scenery took over British television? Our Yorkshire Farm, The Yorkshire Vet, Yorkshire this, Yorkshire that – a small-screen succession of wild moor, verdant dale and craggy coast. But the best show set in the county’s broad acres didn’t centre on spectacular vistas. Broadcast on Channel 4 in 2013, Educating Yorkshire was based at Thornhill Community Academy, a large secondary school on the edge of Dewsbury, not far from the M1, and it was the interactions – both good and bad – between staff and pupils rather than the scenery that caught the public imagination. The most memorable of those interactions took place when English teacher Matthew Burton helped Musharaf Asghar. The Year 11 student had suffered from a profound stammer since he was five and was obliged, as part of his English GCSE exam, to make a speech. Burton, the sort of resourceful and committed teacher that every child deserves, borrowed a trick from the film The King’s Speech, telling “Mushy” to listen to music as he tried to talk. It worked. Viewers gasped, and perhaps stifled a sob, as Asghar’s first faltering words came out. There were dramatic outcomes for Asghar, who went on to university where he studied journalism and is now a motivational speaker, but also for Burton. His wife Laura had suffered a miscarriage at the start of the year, just when the series was being filmed. “It was a difficult period,” he says. Nine months later, when the episode was screened, she was pregnant again with their first child, Liv. “We watched the last episode, when Musharaf was on, in the school hall after a parents’ evening. Laura was standing next to me feeling Liv kick in her tummy. Not long after Liv was born, I became a different kind of teacher, a different leader. It was an unbelievable end to what started as a difficult year. 2013 changed my life.” Now Educating Yorkshire is back, and so is Mr Burton. He’s talking to me to…

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Educating Yorkshire’s Mr Burton talks show’s return and modern teaching: “I don’t think AI is ever going to be able to replace human teachers”
type: item
date: 2025-08-25T23:01:16.000Z
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Channel 4
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Twelve years ago, inspirational teacher Matthew Burton became the breakout star of a reality TV series set in a Yorkshire school. Now he’s returning to teach pupils (and us) more valuable life lessons.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Remember when Yorkshire and its magnificent scenery took over British television? Our Yorkshire Farm, The Yorkshire Vet, Yorkshire this, Yorkshire that – a small-screen succession of wild moor, verdant dale and craggy coast. But the best show set in the county’s broad acres didn’t centre on spectacular vistas. Broadcast on Channel 4 in 2013, Educating Yorkshire was based at Thornhill Community Academy, a large secondary school on the edge of Dewsbury, not far from the M1, and it was the interactions – both good and bad – between staff and pupils rather than the scenery that caught the public imagination. The most memorable of those interactions took place when English teacher Matthew Burton helped Musharaf Asghar. The Year 11 student had suffered from a profound stammer since he was five and was obliged, as part of his English GCSE exam, to make a speech. Burton, the sort of resourceful and committed teacher that every child deserves, borrowed a trick from the film The King’s Speech, telling “Mushy” to listen to music as he tried to talk. It worked. Viewers gasped, and perhaps stifled a sob, as Asghar’s first faltering words came out. There were dramatic outcomes for Asghar, who went on to university where he studied journalism and is now a motivational speaker, but also for Burton. His wife Laura had suffered a miscarriage at the start of the year, just when the series was being filmed. “It was a difficult period,” he says. Nine months later, when the episode was screened, she was pregnant again with their first child, Liv. “We watched the last episode, when Musharaf was on, in the school hall after a parents’ evening. Laura was standing next to me feeling Liv kick in her tummy. Not long after Liv was born, I became a different kind of teacher, a different leader. It was an unbelievable end to what started as a difficult year. 2013 changed my life.” Now Educating Yorkshire is back, and so is Mr Burton. He’s talki…

'The shadow of the book hung over us'
type: item
creator: Michael Hodges
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Celia Imrie plays Joyce in The Thursday Murder Club
encoded: Add The Thursday Murder Club to your watchlist The Thursday Murder Club is immense fun to watch. Was it just as much fun to make? Chris Columbus’s most magical qualities are his enthusiasm and encouragement. What more do you want? So it was wonderfully carefree, in a way, but we did all have the shadow of a very popular book hanging over us. It’s going to be as near to it as dammit, but there are some avid readers who will probably be critical. Well, they might be, but actually I think it’s a very faithful representation. View oEmbed on the source website Were you surprised to get the part? When we were first cast, of course there were some people who didn’t approve, but that’s all right. Peculiarly, people had talked to me about it two years before, saying, “C, you really should go up for this.” I didn’t know anything about the books, so I was quite naive. But how lucky am I? With some parts that come my way now, the chances are I’m going to be in a wheelchair or have Alzheimer’s. I’m still running fast away from that department. So you’re not quite ready to book into Coopers Chase yourself, then? I still think I’m 26, you see, and I hope I’ve got all sorts of challenges ahead. For actors, giving up and retirement just don’t come into our vocabulary.Although I do look back over birthday parties I’ve had recently, and see some people aren’t here any more. I don’t let it hang too heavily. Victoria Wood [her co-star in dinnerladies] died when she was far too young. I had no idea she was ill, so it was a terrible shock. But it just makes me think we’ve got to make the most of every moment rather than it being a cloud over my head. Every day, every hour, is precious and has to be filled to the absolute brim. That’s how I feel now.

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