As The World at One turns 60, Sarah Montague reveals the secrets of its success — and the key to a good interview
The World At One is on Monday-Friday at 1pm on BBC Radio 4. Add it to your collection. A month after Radio 4’s The World at One turned 60, its host for the last seven years is bullish about the show known as WATO (pronounced “what-oh”). This is certainly no time for thoughts of pensioning off the lunchtime news analysis, says Sarah Montague. “People always talk about the challenge from news podcasts, but our figures are remarkably stable.” Which are? “They bounce around 3.4 million.” Montague, who also turns 60 in a few months’ time, came to the show after 18 years co-heading the big beast that is Today. A downscaling? Hardly. “When you’re the only presenter, you feel more responsible. It’s a liberation not to have immovable furniture, like Thought for the Day. Or the tyranny of set interviews having to run at a certain time. If it’s good, we run with it.” WATO is also more thoughtful, she says. “It’s on at a less angry time of day. People are having their lunch. Afterwards, you get emails, rather than social media from listeners. More light than heat, is what I always say.” I suggest that what makes her stand out amid a crowded field is that she keeps her questions short. “Really? I don’t think I think enough in advance about what I am going to ask. Oh, don’t be so self-deprecating,” she says, almost to herself. “The good thing is being able to listen.” Indeed, the mark of a classy interviewer. The show is probably the most dynamic of the four daily news sequences on Radio 4. If something is really good, Montague explains, the whole running order is ripped up. “It’s The World at One, not The World when We Had the 9am Meeting. You chuck things out of the window, lay the structure down, even as we’re on air. You’re trying to tell the story of the day.” Over the years, these have included some marvels, many of which have been replayed on WATO to mark the birthday: an interview with Cissie Charlton, mother of Bobby and Jack, the day before the 1966 World Cup final; Mick Jagger speaking before the Stones’ release of Let’s Spend the Night Together (in 1967, it was controversial); a teenage William Hague making his famous speech at the Conservative Party Listen conference in 1977; interviews with world leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. More recently, in 2005 the show was extended to help keep the public informed after the 7/7 bombings in central London. And now? Montague says that with so many working from home, the programme has had something of a boost. “During Covid, listening figures went through the roof. I think people came to us and stayed because we make inaccessible subjects accessible. The longterm challenge is to reach younger people, so Evan Davis and I do a podcast [Figuring It Out, available on BBC Sounds].” Montague, who doesn’t relish a huge personal profile, made the news five years ago, after realising that she was paid a lot less than equivalent male colleagues. After a public row about fair pay for women at the BBC, she won a £400,000 settlement and an apology. Has the experience left her unscathed? “Are you unscathed after anything like that?” she asks. “It was formative. I was very uncomfortable, because I like my job. I was glad to get the whole thing behind me and carry on. Although I can still summon up the anger, let’s be honest.” How is the situation now? “Better. The next struggle within the BBC is class. Whether you went to Oxbridge or not is less of an issue, but class has still to be addressed.” How does she consider her own headline birthday? “I’ve never really cared about getting older. I was cited as an ‘older woman’ at the BBC when I was 41. Although radio has got more visual, so maybe I should care. Sometimes I think maybe I should have…” Some Botox? “No, not Botox! No, sometimes I think maybe I should put on a bit more make-up.”
Kevin Bazeley was thrown out of the RAF for being gay – now he’s helping the Armed Forces to embrace inclusion
Add Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance 2025 to your watchlist This year, an important anniversary is being acknowledged ahead of Remembrance Sunday. It’s been 25 years since the Government lifted the ban on gay people serving in the Armed Forces. For Kevin Bazeley, however, it was too late. The ban affected his entire life because when he was in the forces it was a criminal offence to be gay, punishable by court martial and even imprisonment. Bazeley’s story will be featured in the annual Festival of Remembrance event at London’s Royal Albert Hall. As well as the familiar poppy drop, commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, military music, the attendance of hundreds of members of the Armed Forces and performances by artists such as Sir Rod Stewart, the event will feature a film on how this most egregious of wrongs was put right a quarter of a century ago. “Joining the RAF was my childhood dream,” Bazeley tells RT, just before the unveiling in October of a memorial to LGBTQ+ members of the Armed Forces at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, which was attended by King Charles. Bazeley, too, was at the ceremony. “I was 18 when I joined in 1985, straight from school. I trained as a navigator and served in the first Gulf War. Then I went to RAF Kinloss in Scotland where I flew on Nimrod aircraft.” However, as the years went by and even though he was married with two daughters, he realised his true sexuality hadn’t been acknowledged, even by himself. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/11/483D19XAG-7cc04e2-e1762352558931.jpg" width="5600" height="3740" alt="Week 46 Remembrance" title="King Charles III (centre) during a visit to the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire, for the dedication ceremony of the LGBT+ Armed Forces memorial, the UK's first national memorial commemorating LGBT+ people who have served and continue" /> “In 1993 I separated from my wife, but I couldn’t tell her why because it was illegal to be gay in the RAF.” A year later, while at RAF Kinloss, disaster struck. “I had joined the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club and I lost my membership card somewhere on the base.” Several weeks of anxiety followed. “The military police were intense in their searches to root out gay people. The moment any suspicion fell on someone they were followed, their rooms were searched and they were interrogated with forced medical examinations.” And so Bazeley waited. “I lost my card in June. For the next seven weeks every morning I’d wake up and think, ‘Is today the day?’ On 4 August, we landed back from a training flight and the Squadron Wing Commander met the aircraft, which was unusual. He asked me to follow him and I knew it was the end of my career.” Bazeley was handed over to the Special Investigation Branch and taken to a dark and dingy interview room. “I knew I was done,” he says. He was subjected to “very personal” interrogations from his superior officers. “They would ask me the same questions over and over. My world was gone. Everything I worked towards had gone.” Put under house arrest, he never got to speak to his team again. The only person who spoke to him was a young flight lieutenant called Richard Knighton. “He’s now Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, Chief of the Defence Staff. His support has been amazing,” says Bazeley. “He’s the only person who has kept in touch.” Bazeley was discharged in September 1995 – five years before the law that made it illegal to be homosexual in the armed forces was overturned on 12 January 2000. After being forced out of the RAF, Bazeley retrained and spent the next 27 years working as an accountant for GE Aviation [now GE Aerospace]. Since 2022, he has campaigned for inclusion and diversity, working with the Armed Forces’ charity, Fighting with Pride. In 2023, the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made an apology on behalf of the state to the LGBTQ+ Armed Forces community, many of whom will be present at the Royal Albert Hall. “We had our medals, ranks and berets restored, and were welcomed back into the military family,” says Bazeley. There was also financial recognition: “A £50,000 Dismissal Payment, and also an Impact Payment, judged by a panel, from £1,000 up to £20,000, which is open for claims until 12 December 2026.” What are his feelings on the 25th anniversary of the lifting of the ban? “I will forever be disappointed that it’s not the 30th anniversary because then I wouldn’t have been thrown out.” Bazeley did, however, play a part in the project to create the memorial to LGBTQ+ members of the Armed Forces. A folded sheet of bronze on a Yorkstone base, it represents a letter between loved ones, found and used in evidence to dismiss someone. “It’s an incredible piece of art,” says Bazeley. “It reflects the pain and sacrifice of the veterans but is full of hope for the future. Because in all conflicts there were gay people. And they fought and died alongside everyone else.” Remembrance Sunday: The Cenotaph is on Sunday 10.15am on BBC One
At 90, Mary Berry celebrates over 50 years on television with a new series – and is as passionate as ever about her mission to get the nation cooking
How to summarise Mary Berry? National treasure, inspirational cook. Yes, of course. But there’s more. Dame Mary is as strategically driven as any business tycoon. It’s just that we don’t consider white-haired ladies who love to cook in this sort of way, especially one who was paid a mere £4.75 for one of her very first TV appearances, demonstrating the principles of a freezer. We’re at a riverside club near her Oxfordshire home for our photoshoot and interview and it’s nice to be greeted by a woman with perfect manners, who looks as pleased to see you as she would when lifting a perfectly cooked chicken out of the oven. In her 91st year [her 90th birthday was on 24 March], she’s here with Freddie, one of her two working cocker spaniels, who, despite already having had an hour-long walk in the countryside, looks up at her imploringly. I know how you feel, Freddie. We all want to have a bit of attention from Dame Mary. I first met her 31 years ago when she was plain Mrs Berry and I attended an Aga cookery course at her home. Three decades on, she’s as beady as ever, inspecting what she’s about to wear and complimenting her assistant on her pink jumper. She’s filmed a new six-part series, Mary at 90: a Lifetime of Cooking, in which she looks back at her long career on television, as well as concocting modern twists to some of her own favourite recipes, with six famous faces, including Jamie Oliver, Gabby Logan and Tom Allen. ITV footage from the 70s shows Mary demure, round-faced, with perfect RP, in a chintzy blouse. But behind those periwinkle eyes and that fluting voice lies ferocious drive. “Life is competitive. And whether you’re going for a job, or playing a sport, it’s good to do everything well,” she says now. She is also a culinary time capsule, noting (and using) the advent of five spice, fennel, fresh ginger. She can pinpoint the arrival of tin foil. “I was working for Home and Freezer Digest, and I remember the editor coming in and saying, ‘Look what’s arrived from America!’ The first thing we said was, ‘Do we use the shiny side or the dull side? Does it matter?’” Today, she has written more than 70 books that have sold over five million copies. Despite her drive, it was Delia Smith who pointed out, years ago, visiting Mary and her husband Paul Hunnings at their home, that she was underpaid. “Oh, Delia was absolutely brilliant. She came to stay with her husband Michael and we chatted about all sorts of things. I mean, you should never discuss money, sex or religion. But we did discuss money. She said, ‘You’re not being paid enough for your writing. I know an agent, Felicity Bryan, and I’ll ring her tonight.’ And the next day I got a postcard from Felicity saying, ‘Can we meet?’ And I’m still with her agency for my books.” [Bryan died in 2020.] Looking back at the archive footage, it’s clear that TV chefs today don’t know how lucky they are. Mary recalls her first appearance in the mid-70s on Good Afternoon, ITV’s magazine show, in which she was to demonstrate the principles of a freezer. “I wrote a book for Marks & Spencer about how to freeze things well, because if you put something in the freezer which is grotty, it will come out grotty. “There was no background help [for the TV appearance]. I had to bring in everything, every pot, pan, knife. All the food, vegetables, fish, mince, seasoning. I would be picked up in a taxi in the dark and arrive at Thames Television, where the tables were still set with newspapers from last night’s bulletin. They’d build a kitchen, and stick a clock on the wall, but the drawers didn’t open. There was no drain; water from the tap would empty into a bucket beneath my feet. If I turned the tap on too strongly, to wash a cabbage, say, and got carried away chatting to Judith [Chalmers, the Good Afternoon presenter], the bucket underneath would overflow and we would be paddling in water.” After her initial invitation, Mary became a regular, standing alongside Chalmers, showing viewers how to cook. She could hardly have known it, but her first job for the Electricity Board in Bath, demonstrating how electric ovens can create the perfect sponge, was ideal training. Watching herself back, Mary is helpless with laughter. “My voice! It was so high-pitched. But I had one aim. And that was to get people to cook and enjoy it as much as I did.” Recipes would be provided for viewers, but only ones who bothered to send in that historical artefact, a stamped addressed envelope. “Ask young people today what an SAE is, and they just look at you,” she marvels. As for brand Berry, was there a specially curated look? Zero attention. “There was no make-up. No wardrobe. You just arrived in your own clothes. And I would bring in daisies I’d picked from the garden.” When Mary made her debut on The Great British Bake Off in 2010, it cemented her name with a new generation. She landed the job after an audition, “But I said, ‘I do need someone with a second opinion, and [a rare moment of vulnerability] I’m really not very good at bread. It’s not my forte.’ So that’s how Paul Hollywood came. And gosh, he was very different from me. I don’t want tears. So, if something had collapsed in the middle, I’d say to a contestant, ‘Do you know what you could do with that? You could just scoop a little bit out, fill it with fruit and cream, and you’ve got a pudding.” Later, when Bake Off moved to Channel 4 in 2017, she stayed with the corporation. “I feel very cherished by the BBC, and it was quite right I stayed with them,” she says. And so, Mary’s TV career continued, with series such as Classic Mary Berry and a plethora of Christmas specials. Away from the screen, she likes to play croquet, read, walk her dogs and cook with her grandchildren. She is trim but doesn’t go to the gym. “Why go to the gym when you can walk a dog for an hour?” She has kept up with new food trends (she has a lot of plant-based recipes in her latest show) and technology. “You have to go with the trends, and yes, we are on Instagram.” She regrets her parents weren’t around to see her being made a Dame at Windsor Castle in 2021. “I am a great believer in genes. And my father was a remarkable man. My parents set an amazing example to me. When I found that I was going to be made a Dame, I couldn’t ring and tell them, but they are up there and looking down on me, and I know they’re quite pleased,” she says, smiling. “Your own children don’t notice, of course.” Mary enjoys a positive attitude, which helped following the death of her son William, who was killed aged 19 in a car crash in 1989. It was after this tragedy that she started teaching Aga courses at her home, although I recall there was no indication that she had been bereaved. She was just as charming and chirpy as she is today. Perhaps the whole routine helped keep up her morale. “I think of William every day. Of course I do. And if he were to walk through that door over there, I would say, ‘Where the hell have you been?’ I’m still very proud of him. I think of the joy he gave us. He was a lovely child, but you have to step back and think – I had wonderful parents, I’ve got two more children, Annabel and Tom, and my grandchildren. I mean, it would be devastating if you only had one child. I am very fortunate. And I have a husband who is 93.” She says the recipe for her marital success is that she steps out of the house when she can see an argument brewing. “Paul always says that the secret to our long marriage is his saying, ‘Yes, dear’ to everything, and then going his own way. But we don’t argue. If any disagreements come up, I open the back door and just go out and maybe pick some flowers or get some apples. It’s amazing if you can walk away. “Of course, if I was living in a top-floor flat, that would be difficult. But we respect each other. And I’m very lucky. He has mellowed in his old age and he’s become very appreciative of me. So I look after him, and it’s a great pleasure. That’s what I promised to do. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. And we are very happy in our dotage.” Not that I can see Mary having an argument about much, with anyone. She is totally charming and enjoys a good relationship with all her guests in the new series, particularly Jamie Oliver: “I didn’t get any school qualifications, and neither did he,” she says. Which of her guests learnt the most from cooking with her? “Oh, Alan Titchmarsh,” she says immediately. “We made spaghetti with salmon, and he hadn’t a clue. But he was so keen. To me, the huge reward was that 10 days after we recorded the show, he sent me an email with a picture of a table, all laid with the pasta dish and a glass of red wine. He said, ‘I did exactly what you said, and I’m very proud of this.’” She smiles. “He gets the star. That is what I love. People stop me in the supermarket and say, ‘You inspired me to cook’. That is what television does. It’s a huge cookery class, for two or three million people. If I do things well, people will make them at home.” That was the aim all those years ago. Still is. A new book, Mary 90: My Very Best Recipes, is available now (BBC Books)
Mary Berry reveals secret to happy marriage with 93-year-old husband – leaving the house when an argument starts
At 90, Mary Berry celebrates over 50 years on television with a new series – and is as passionate as ever about her mission to get the nation cooking.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. How to summarise Mary Berry? National treasure, inspirational cook. Yes, of course. But there’s more. Dame Mary is as strategically driven as any business tycoon. It’s just that we don’t consider white-haired ladies who love to cook in this sort of way, especially one who was paid a mere £4.75 for one of her very first TV appearances, demonstrating the principles of a freezer. We’re at a riverside club near her Oxfordshire home for our photoshoot and interview and it’s nice to be greeted by a woman with perfect manners, who looks as pleased to see you as she would when lifting a perfectly cooked chicken out of the oven. In her 91st year [her 90th birthday was on 24 March], she’s here with Freddie, one of her two working cocker spaniels, who, despite already having had an hour-long walk in the countryside, looks up at her imploringly. I know how you feel, Freddie. We all want to have a bit of attention from Dame Mary. I first met her 31 years ago when she was plain Mrs Berry and I attended an Aga cookery course at her home. Three decades on, she’s as beady as ever, inspecting what she’s about to wear and complimenting her assistant on her pink jumper. She’s filmed a new six-part series, Mary at 90: a Lifetime of Cooking, in which she looks back at her long career on television, as well as concocting modern twists to some of her own favourite recipes, with six famous faces, including Jamie Oliver, Gabby Logan and Tom Allen. ITV footage from the 70s shows Mary demure, round-faced, with perfect RP, in a chintzy blouse. But behind those periwinkle eyes and that fluting voice lies ferocious drive. “Life is competitive. And whether you’re going for a job, or playing a sport, it’s good to do everything well,” she says now. She is also a culinary time capsule, noting (and using) the advent of five spice, fennel, fresh ginger. She can pinpoint the arrival of tin foil. “I was working for Home and Freezer Digest, and I remember the editor coming in and saying, ‘Look what’s arrived from America!’ The first thing we said was, ‘Do we use the shiny side or the dull side? Does it matter?’” Today, she has written more than 70 books that have sold over five million copies. Despite her drive, it was Delia Smith who pointed out, years ago, visiting Mary and her husband Paul Hunnings at their home, that she was underpaid. “Oh, Delia was absolutely brilliant. She came to stay with her husband Michael and we chatted about all sorts of things. I mean, you should never discuss money, sex or religion. But we did discuss money. She said, ‘You’re not being paid enough for your writing. I know an agent, Felicity Bryan, and I’ll ring her tonight.’ And the next day I got a postcard from Felicity saying, ‘Can we meet?’ And I’m still with her agency for my books.” [Bryan died in 2020.] Looking back at the archive footage, it’s clear that TV chefs today don’t know how lucky they are. Mary recalls her first appearance in the mid-70s on Good Afternoon, ITV’s magazine show, in which she was to demonstrate the principles of a freezer. “I wrote a book for Marks & Spencer about how to freeze things well, because if you put something in the freezer which is grotty, it will come out grotty. “There was no background help [for the TV appearance]. I had to bring in everything, every pot, pan, knife. All the food, vegetables, fish, mince, seasoning. I would be picked up in a taxi in the dark and arrive at Thames Television, where the tables were still set with newspapers from last night’s bulletin. They’d build a kitchen, and stick a clock on the wall, but the drawers didn’t open. There was no drain; water from the tap would empty into a bucket beneath my feet. If I turned the tap on too strongly, to wash a cabbage, say, and got carried away chatting to Judith [Chalmers, the Good Afternoon presenter], the bucket underneath would overflow and we would be paddling in water.” After her initial invitation, Mary became a regular, standing alongside Chalmers, showing viewers how to cook. She could hardly have known it, but her first job for the Electricity Board in Bath, demonstrating how electric ovens can create the perfect sponge, was ideal training. Watching herself back, Mary is helpless with laughter. “My voice! It was so high-pitched. But I had one aim. And that was to get people to cook and enjoy it as much as I did.” Recipes would be provided for viewers, but only ones who bothered to send in that historical artefact, a stamped addressed envelope. “Ask young people today what an SAE is, and they just look at you,” she marvels. As for brand Berry, was there a specially curated look? Zero attention. “There was no make-up. No wardrobe. You just arrived in your own clothes. And I would bring in daisies I’d picked from the garden.” When Mary made her debut on The Great British Bake Off in 2010, it cemented her name with a new generation. She landed the job after an audition, “But I said, ‘I do need someone with a second opinion, and [a rare moment of vulnerability] I’m really not very good at bread. It’s not my forte.’ So that’s how Paul Hollywood came. And gosh, he was very different from me. I don’t want tears. So, if something had collapsed in the middle, I’d say to a contestant, ‘Do you know what you could do with that? You could just scoop a little bit out, fill it with fruit and cream, and you’ve got a pudding.” Later, when Bake Off moved to Channel 4 in 2017, she stayed with the corporation. “I feel very cherished by the BBC, and it was quite right I stayed with them,” she says. And so, Mary’s TV career continued, with series such as Classic Mary Berry and a plethora of Christmas specials. Away from the screen, she likes to play croquet, read, walk her dogs and cook with her grandchildren. She is trim but doesn’t go to the gym. “Why go to the gym when you can walk a dog for an hour?” She has kept up with new food trends (she has a lot of plant-based recipes in her latest show) and technology. “You have to go with the trends, and yes, we are on Instagram.” She regrets her parents weren’t around to see her being made a Dame at Windsor Castle in 2021. “I am a great believer in genes. And my father was a remarkable man. My parents set an amazing example to me. When I found that I was going to be made a Dame, I couldn’t ring and tell them, but they are up there and looking down on me, and I know they’re quite pleased,” she says, smiling. “Your own children don’t notice, of course.” Mary enjoys a positive attitude, which helped following the death of her son William, who was killed aged 19 in a car crash in 1989. It was after this tragedy that she started teaching Aga courses at her home, although I recall there was no indication that she had been bereaved. She was just as charming and chirpy as she is today. Perhaps the whole routine helped keep up her morale. “I think of William every day. Of course I do. And if he were to walk through that door over there, I would say, ‘Where the hell have you been?’ I’m still very proud of him. I think of the joy he gave us. He was a lovely child, but you have to step back and think – I had wonderful parents, I’ve got two more children, Annabel and Tom, and my grandchildren. I mean, it would be devastating if you only had one child. I am very fortunate. And I have a husband who is 93.” She says the recipe for her marital success is that she steps out of the house when she can see an argument brewing. “Paul always says that the secret to our long marriage is his saying, ‘Yes, dear’ to everything, and then going his own way. But we don’t argue. If any disagreements come up, I open the back door and just go out and maybe pick some flowers or get some apples. It’s amazing if you can walk away. “Of course, if I was living in a top-floor flat, that would be difficult. But we respect each other. And I’m very lucky. He has mellowed in his old age and he’s become very appreciative of me. So I look after him, and it’s a great pleasure. That’s what I promised to do. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. And we are very happy in our dotage.” Not that I can see Mary having an argument about much, with anyone. She is totally charming and enjoys a good relationship with all her guests in the new series, particularly Jamie Oliver: “I didn’t get any school qualifications, and neither did he,” she says. Which of her guests learnt the most from cooking with her? “Oh, Alan Titchmarsh,” she says immediately. “We made spaghetti with salmon, and he hadn’t a clue. But he was so keen. To me, the huge reward was that 10 days after we recorded the show, he sent me an email with a picture of a table, all laid with the pasta dish and a glass of red wine. He said, ‘I did exactly what you said, and I’m very proud of this.’” She smiles. “He gets the star. That is what I love. People stop me in the supermarket and say, ‘You inspired me to cook’. That is what television does. It’s a huge cookery class, for two or three million people. If I do things well, people will make them at home.” That was the aim all those years ago. Still is. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Mary at 90: A Lifetime of Cooking begins Tuesday 28th October at 7:30pm on BBC Two and iPlayer. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Sky’s new thriller sees Tom Hollander and Niamh Algar tearing through Italy’s most glamorous locations on a quest to crack a code – and save the world
Add The Iris Affair to your watchlist Tom Hollander may be many things: vulnerable (Rev); literary (Capote vs the Swans); ruthless (The Night Manager); dangerously louche (The White Lotus), but one thing he is not, is an action hero. He’s an Honorary Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge for goodness’ sake. He writes for The Spectator. He’s too learned, too urbane. Hence when Neil Cross, award-winning screenwriter and the man behind Luther, originally envisaged him starring in his new thriller The Iris Affair, it was more as a behind-the-desk mastermind than a fist-swinging, tweed-coat-donning anti-hero. More a fraught middleman. In a cardie. However, what the 58-year-old Hollander does find himself in is a semi-James Bond, semi-Severance eight-part high-tech escapade around Italy and Slovakia. It’s great fun in a witty British way. Hollander plays Cameron Beck, a maverick genius whose job it is to unlock the secrets contained in a giant computer and save the world. To do this, he enlists the help of Iris (Niamh Algar), a brainy Lara Croft type who loves unlocking codes and cracking puzzles. She’s also pretty handy with her fists, guns and syringes and at one point emerges from the waves like a modern-day Ursula Andress. Iris has all the fun. Whereas Hollander? He uses middle-class phrases such as “swapsies” and “thinking cap” and spends a lot of time drinking whisky. We meet on set during the shoot at the legendary Cinecitta Studios in Rome. “Cameron Beck is someone who is an enthusiast for brilliant people,” Hollander explains. “He’s financed the building of this brilliant computer, and he loves games. Now he needs to find someone to break a code that will solve all his problems.” Because if Beck doesn’t unlock the computer with the help of Iris, he will be killed. Hence all the car chases and derring-do? “Yes, there is a very long car chase, interspersed with some very clever philosophical speculation. But I don’t do very much of the former. Although we did go up in a helicopter the other day… “It’s a bit like a live action Wacky Races with a bit of intellectual texture to it, and with Niamh as Penelope Pitstop,” he continues, referring to the classic 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. Does that make him the evil mastermind Dick Dastardly? “For bits of it. At other times I’m Muttley.” [Dastardly’s canine sidekick who takes all the blame]. Casting directors seem to like sending Hollander off to work in Italy, I say, referring to his role as Quentin, the lavish gay Brit who seeks to trap, and murder Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid in the second season of The White Lotus. “Yes, it’s a nice feeling to be back in Italy again,” he says. “There is a lot of pasta. Which is offered and mostly rejected because of the need to stay in shape. Even though I notice Italians are in very good shape, despite the fact they have cake for breakfast and pasta for lunch.” “In many ways, Tom’s got the qualities of an old-style Hollywood leading man,” explains Neil Cross, who says he watches a minimum of eight classic movies every weekend in order to keep his eye on what makes a good story and a great script. “He can get inside the material and deliver elaborate dialogue – which, if it was delivered by a less able actor could spill over into camp. Cameron Beck has to be capable of charm and ferocious intelligence. “In Cameron and Iris, I wanted people who were massively attracted to how the other thinks. It’s the primary driver behind most of Hitchcock’s thrillers, but also old-fashioned comedies like It Happened One Night or Bringing Up Baby. Films with scripts that are quick, and witty. And both Tom and Niamh can do that. “My primary intention was to make a TV show without being arch, and without being post-modern – something refreshingly old-fashioned. I wanted to apply the kind of storytelling that was used by directors who were unfashionable by 1973. “I also wanted the show to look unapologetically, unironically glamorous. When I was pitching it to Sky, I said Iris must never drive a car with a roof, like Grace Kelly. And the sky is always blue, and the mountains are beautiful, and she needs to be beautiful.” Iris may be beautiful but she also has to be able to get dusty, fight in the street, leap on and off motorbikes and push cars over cliffs. “I had to learn how to ride a Vespa and one of those little Italian three-wheelers,” says Niamh Algar. “And a Ferrari! I’m also about to film a huge fight sequence, which is going to be gruesome…” The grittier the better for Algar, it seems. “I started boxing years ago. It has come in handy, because if you’re taking hits and punching people, you need to be able to work seamlessly with the stunt team.” Amongst the car chases and fight scenes is there actually an Iris ‘affair’? “Iris is infatuated by Cameron, his mind and drive,” says Niamh. “But also, these two are constantly trying to kill one another!” That sounds like a nicely deflected no… But how was it working with Hollander? “I’m such a huge fan! Any time you see his name on the credits, you think, OK, this guy is about to steal the scene. There’s this emotional depth he brings to the character, which is fascinating because that changes as you play the character. Particularly with TV because you don’t get much rehearsal time. And Terry doesn’t like to over-rehearse.” Terry is the director Terry McDonough, whose CV includes Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul. Like those two series, this show makes you root for the baddies, the script is clever, it keeps you on your toes and saves the story from being gratuitously drowned in violence. Hollander is as carefully nuanced as was his star turn in The White Lotus. Is he a baddie? Is he a goodie? Cameron Beck seems very cunning, and you fear for the vulnerable people in his command. But then all of a sudden, he stops talking about cutting people’s limbs off and comes out with a homely British phrase like “Blimey”. The overall effect is to make you feel comforted and reassured, as if he’s going to offer you Marmite on toast and a cup of tea. This acting see-saw is Hollander’s special skill. “Yes, I’ve done a few of those roles where the audience thinks: ‘Oh, he’s quite nice! Oh no, he’s a villain!’” Take his role in The White Lotus – spoiler alert – “We didn’t know that Quentin was necessarily going to kill Tanya,” he says, “but the game was ‘Is he? Isn’t he? Is he? Isn’t he?’” Why does he think he’s cast in such roles? “Because if you do it, and do it reasonably well, then you get asked again.” Dick Dastardly or Muttley? Heartless provocateur or cosy delight? Tom Hollander has a fabulous ability to deploy both.
The Night Manager's Tom Hollander and co-star Niamh Algar take us inside your next TV adventure
Sky’s new thriller sees Tom Hollander and Niamh Algar tearing through Italy’s most glamorous locations on a quest to crack a code – and save the world.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Tom Hollander may be many things: vulnerable (Rev); literary (Capote vs the Swans); ruthless (The Night Manager); dangerously louche (The White Lotus), but one thing he is not, is an action hero. He’s an Honorary Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge for goodness’ sake. He writes for The Spectator. He’s too learned, too urbane. Hence when Neil Cross, award-winning screenwriter and the man behind Luther, originally envisaged him starring in his new thriller The Iris Affair, it was more as a behind-the-desk mastermind than a fist-swinging, tweed-coat-donning anti-hero. More a fraught middleman. In a cardie. However, what the 58-year-old Hollander does find himself in is a semi-James Bond, semi-Severance eight-part hi-tech escapade around Italy and Slovakia. It’s great fun in a witty British way. Hollander plays Cameron Beck, a maverick genius whose job it is to unlock the secrets contained in a giant computer and save the world. To do this, he enlists the help of Iris (Niamh Algar), a brainy Lara Croft type who loves unlocking codes and cracking puzzles. She’s also pretty handy with her fists, guns and syringes and at one point emerges from the waves like a modern-day Ursula Andress. Iris has all the fun. Whereas Hollander? He uses middle-class phrases such as “swapsies” and “thinking cap” and spends a lot of time drinking whisky. We meet on set during the shoot at the legendary Cinecitta Studios in Rome. “Cameron Beck is someone who is an enthusiast for brilliant people,” Hollander explains. “He’s financed the building of this brilliant computer, and he loves games. Now he needs to find someone to break a code that will solve all his problems.” Because if Beck doesn’t unlock the computer with the help of Iris, he will be killed. Hence all the car chases and derring-do? “Yes, there is a very long car chase, interspersed with some very clever philosophical speculation. But I don’t do very much of the former. Although we did go up in a helicopter the other day… It’s a bit like a live action Wacky Races with a bit of intellectual texture to it, and with Niamh as Penelope Pitstop,” he continues, referring to the classic 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. Does that make him the evil mastermind Dick Dastardly? “For bits of it. At other times I’m Muttley.” [Dastardly’s canine sidekick who takes all the blame]. Casting directors seem to like sending Hollander off to work in Italy, I say, referring to his role as Quentin, the lavish gay Brit who seeks to trap, and murder Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid in the second season of The White Lotus. “Yes, it’s a nice feeling to be back in Italy again,” he says. “There is a lot of pasta. Which is offered and mostly rejected because of the need to stay in shape. Even though I notice Italians are in very good shape, despite the fact they have cake for breakfast and pasta for lunch.” “In many ways, Tom’s got the qualities of an old-style Hollywood leading man,” explains Neil Cross, who says he watches a minimum of eight classic movies every weekend in order to keep his eye on what makes a good story and a great script. “He can get inside the material and deliver elaborate dialogue – which, if it was delivered by a less able actor could spill over into camp. Cameron Beck has to be capable of charm and ferocious intelligence. “In Cameron and Iris, I wanted people who were massively attracted to how the other thinks. It’s the primary driver behind most of Hitchcock’s thrillers, but also old-fashioned comedies like It Happened One Night or Bringing Up Baby. Films with scripts that are quick, and witty. And both Tom and Niamh can do that. “My primary intention was to make a TV show without being arch, and without being post-modern – something refreshingly old-fashioned. I wanted to apply the kind of storytelling that was used by directors who were unfashionable by 1973. I also wanted the show to look unapologetically, unironically glamorous. When I was pitching it to Sky, I said Iris must never drive a car with a roof, like Grace Kelly. And the sky is always blue, and the mountains are beautiful, and she needs to be beautiful.” Iris may be beautiful but she also has to be able to get dusty, fight in the street, leap on and off motorbikes and push cars over cliffs. “I had to learn how to ride a Vespa and one of those little Italian three-wheelers,” says Niamh Algar. “And a Ferrari! I’m also about to film a huge fight sequence, which is going to be gruesome…” The grittier the better for Algar, it seems. “I started boxing years ago. It has come in handy, because if you’re taking hits and punching people, you need to be able to work seamlessly with the stunt team.” Amongst the car chases and fight scenes is there actually an Iris ‘affair’? “Iris is infatuated by Cameron, his mind and drive,” says Niamh. “But also, these two are constantly trying to kill one another!” That sounds like a nicely deflected no… But how was it working with Hollander? “I’m such a huge fan! Any time you see his name on the credits, you think, OK, this guy is about to steal the scene. There’s this emotional depth he brings to the character, which is fascinating because that changes as you play the character. Particularly with TV because you don’t get much rehearsal time. And Terry doesn’t like to over-rehearse.” Terry is the director Terry McDonough, whose CV includes Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul. Like those two series, this show makes you root for the baddies, the script is clever, it keeps you on your toes and saves the story from being gratuitously drowned in violence. Hollander is as carefully nuanced as was his star turn in The White Lotus. Is he a baddie? Is he a goodie? Cameron Beck seems very cunning, and you fear for the vulnerable people in his command. But then all of a sudden, he stops talking about cutting people’s limbs off and comes out with a homely British phrase like “Blimey”. The overall effect is to make you feel comforted and reassured, as if he’s going to offer you Marmite on toast and a cup of tea. This acting see-saw is Hollander’s special skill. “Yes, I’ve done a few of those roles where the audience thinks: ‘Oh, he’s quite nice! Oh no, he’s a villain!’” Take his role in The White Lotus – spoiler alert – “We didn’t know that Quentin was necessarily going to kill Tanya,” he says, “but the game was ‘Is he? Isn’t he? Is he? Isn’t he?’” Why does he think he’s cast in such roles? “Because if you do it, and do it reasonably well, then you get asked again.” Dick Dastardly or Muttley? Heartless provocateur or cosy delight? Tom Hollander has a fabulous ability to deploy both. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. The Iris Affair begins on Sky and NOW on 16th October 2025. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
When England cricketer Kate Cross helped coach a girls’ team with Freddie Flintoff, it wasn’t the teenagers’ lack of experience but self-doubt and broken nails that proved to be the real challenge
Add Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams: Ultimate Test to your watchlist With the Women’s Cricket World Cup taking place in Sri Lanka and India in October, and England among the favourites to win, it’s no surprise that cricketing legend Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff wanted to include a girls’ team in the latest series of Field of Dreams, the show in which Flintoff recruits young people for a cricket team and changes their lives along the way. As always, Flintoff hasn’t made life easy for himself, going to communities where cricket is virtually unknown to find players. Not only that, he’s never coached young women before, and he’s also head coach of the England Lions, developing emerging talent for the men’s national side, which means he’s rather busy. So he has drafted in England and Lancashire bowler Kate Cross, to give him a hand and offer a bit of insight. “Crossy” knew Flintoff from afar as a fellow Lancashire player. “Fred texted me, said he had never coached girls and could I help out,” she says. “By the way, this is my hero! He was my role model! So there was no chance I would say no.” While Flintoff goes to shape two groups of lads into viable cricket squads for his new league, Cross heads to South Shore Cricket Club in Blackpool to work with girls for whom team sport of any kind is a new endeavour. Despite being deeply committed to the game and the viability of the women’s sport, this still presented a challenge to the energetic Cross: could she coach 11 teenage girls, most of whom had never thrown a cricket ball? “Historically, cricket was only available in private schools, but what this series is trying to show is that all you need is a bat and a ball. You can play it on the beach or in the street. And so we went into a community where cricket isn’t the norm,” she says. “Team sport was a huge part of my upbringing because I grew up in a very sporty family,” adds Cross, whose father David played for West Ham and was in the team when the Hammers won the FA Cup in 1980. “My journey began by playing in the back garden with my brothers; the biggest influence on me was Heywood Cricket Club, my local club [near Rochdale].” While Cross has been overlooked for the England squad for the World Cup – an omission she has said, on her podcast, “feels savage” – she is a trailblazer nonetheless. She was the first woman to play for the Central Lancashire League in its 123-year history, playing for Heywood at the age of 23 and taking eight wickets in a men’s league match. She confesses that her experience with her Blackpool charges wasn’t straightforward. “I would leave a session so tired and frustrated. They were trying a sport they had never known.” The first episode of Field of Dreams shows Cross and Flintoff managing an introductory session. There are some funny moments. “I see why my mum fancies Freddie,” admits one of the girls candidly. “What if I break my nails?” wails another, waving her hands at Flintoff. “Ever got the sense you’re out of your depth?” he murmurs. But once the team realises TikTok can also be worked in around training, everyone relaxes. Cross also noticed something more fundamental about her team. “They were constantly putting themselves down. When you told them they’d done something well, they didn’t believe you. You wanted them to have fun. These girls were carrying things that 13- to 15-year-olds shouldn’t be carrying. Social media stands out at the centre of all this,” she says. “And none of it is real. People show the best parts of their lives, they don’t show reality. The pressure these young girls are under to look and act a certain way. There is so much pressure to be perfect.” Flintoff doesn’t hold back anything, particularly about his accident in 2022 while filming Top Gear. He is clearly greatly recovered, but it has changed him. “He has spoken very candidly about his accident,” says Cross, “and what this series shows is that cricket has given him something back, and helps him manage. It’s a by-product of the sport.” While the show can change the lives of the young people involved, it’s potentially a demanding voyage for Flintoff and his ego. “Are you from Top Gear, then?” asks one of the girls. “I used to be, but then this happened,” says Freddie, gesturing to his scarred face. “So I’ve gone back to cricket. It’s a bit safer,” he deadpans. “Why do you want to teach cricket?” she persists. “Why? Because I was a cricketer. I played for England,” says Freddie Flintoff MBE, one of the sport’s greatest all rounders. “Oh, did ya?” she says. Flintoff, who played 79 Tests for England, can’t help but laugh. The series shows Flintoff ’s humour and humanity, but it also introduces Cross as a warm and committed presence in the girls’ squad. “Getting to know the girls was the best thing. I had a genuine sense of fulfilment seeing someone mastering a skill. By the end of the training sessions you’re seeing the best parts of their personalities. We had 10 girls who came consistently to training. They became this friendship group. They knew they could have fun. I’m hopeful that they remain friends.” After the final episode was shot, Cross invited them to see her play in a professional game. Was she nervous? “No! It was great to see them there. And it was nice for them to see that I was OK at cricket.” How did she do in front of her charges? “I can’t really remember! Hopefully I picked up a wicket or two!”
'I would never want to be prime minister'
She’s at the top of her game as an actor — but run the country? No thanks. She’s in bed by 9pm
Add Hostage to your watchlist From Coronation Street to Downing Street. The rise and rise of Suranne Jones goes on, and now she’s in charge. And she didn’t even have to audition for the role of prime minister. “No!” she laughs, sitting in a fancy suite in London’s Netflix HQ. “Me and Matt Charman, the writer, have known each other for a long time. We always wanted to do a project together, and I suddenly got an urge to do a political drama. I’ve always loved shows that take the viewer into the halls of power. Matt had done Bridge of Spies and Treason, so I knew that he was the person to go to. We bounced ideas back and forth and then we came up with this idea of me as the prime minister.” But not a lone, Margaret Thatcher figure. “I didn’t want to be the only woman in a room full of men, but one working with another female leader. That’s the thing that’s different about it.” Hostage, a five-part political thriller produced for Netflix, hinges on the relationship between British prime minister, Abigail Dalton (Jones), and France’s female president, Vivienne Toussaint (played by Julie Delpy). Women working together, not pitted against one another. Eventually. “Women are always put against one another, and these two fall for it,” says Jones. “At first there’s a lot of game-playing, and it’s not until later on that they start to see each other properly and realise how they can help each other.” View oEmbed on the source website How did she research the role? “We spoke to people in positions of power. We went to the House of Commons, and we watched Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer battle against each other. We met with the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle. We looked at Nicola Sturgeon. And Jacinda Ardern [the former prime minister of New Zealand]. We looked at Theresa May. And Lucy Powell [MP for Manchester Central]. We had fun developing it. It made me think about what being a woman of power means, and what it costs.” Prime Minister Dalton comes with baggage: a husband (Ashley Thomas), who is a doctor for Médecins sans Frontières, their daughter and also her elderly father Max (James Cosmo). Each one is gravely challenged by the fact that she is prime minister. “The whole thing is about you, your family unit, how women split themselves between work and home, what the cost is, how you want to be portrayed, how the world perceives you as a woman, and what you have to battle with, before you start your day. All of that is going on before you put your heels on. And you might not want to put your heels on. And your power suit. But actually, you have to in order to make a mark in the room.” Clothes play a subtle but crucial part. Delpy is classy in navy and ivory couture, a sort of Catherine Deneuve figure; Jones is smart M&S. “That the French president is effortlessly elegant was important, because her character is so confident. And she’s older, so she has this kind of wisdom on her shoulders, but she’s still making a lot of mistakes within her own personal life. With my character, we wanted to use high-street clothes, as well as British designers. We really thought about it and when you first see me, I’m in something like a Reiss suit with a Bella Freud shirt. But the next time you see her, she’s had an interaction with the French president and she’s dressed just slightly better.” Jones plays a politician who starts with high ideals, and principles, but who has to face up to the compromise that politicians often find themselves forced into, despite themselves. “With politicians, the thing I was interested in, was the hope you give when you’re running for election, and the promises you make. Then the moment you get elected, and the door shuts, you have to go out and tell the world, ‘Actually, we can’t do this, this and this.’ So then everyone that voted for you, has a new opinion of you because you promised all of this stuff, and then you can’t deliver it.” Would she ever want to be prime minister? “I would never want to be prime minister, even for a day. I would never choose it.” Because politicians can’t be truly honest? “Well, they could, but if they were, we’d all be gobsmacked, wouldn’t we? Also, I like to be in bed by 9pm. That’s another reason why I couldn’t be prime minister. There’s far too much to read late into the night. I don’t know how they do it.” That’s why the show is called Hostage. Yes, her husband is taken hostage for real, but Dalton is also hostage to the job. “She’s hostage to Number Ten, to the rules.” Is that pressure more intense for a female PM? “I think it’s harder for women, as it is with most jobs. Breaking down the patriarchy isn’t an easy task. It’s really hard. When a woman stands up, there’s so many labels that she has to fulfil. Abigail Dalton is one person when she’s in front of the cameras but as soon as the door shuts, she’s a right old sweary Mary. And she’s human.” Suranne Jones was born and raised in Chadderton, Greater Manchester and, after performing with Oldham Theatre Workshop and gaining a BTEC in Performing Arts, she went straight into the business. “I started on Coronation Street and I worked my way up. Corrie was like my own form of university and I loved it. And I did my time in theatre and loved it.” Most people will know her from her impressive roster of roles in TV drama; Detective Rachel Bailey in Scott & Bailey, GP Gemma Foster in Doctor Foster (for which she won a Bafta), as well as Vigil and Gentleman Jack. She has her own production company, TeamAkers, that she runs with husband Laurence Akers. Say the company name out loud; it’s witty. She’s also ensuring that other women are able to follow behind her. Not only does Hostage have two astonishing female leads, it has women throughout the team. “We have two female directors. I wanted the best people for the job – but the best people for the job were always going to be women. And Netflix agreed. If women don’t use women writers, or directors, or camera operators, no new women will come up in the industry. We need to train women. And we also need to have older women on screen.” Looking like older women? “Well, as I’m frightened to death of any kind of Botox or anything like that, I’ll get the granny parts!” She reflects a little. “My auntie was talking to me the other day. She said, ‘People always ask me, when did Suranne break her nose?’ I’ve never broken my nose, but because it’s not perfectly straight, or whatever… Anyway, character is about what shines from within. It’s not about fixing what’s outside.” To date, Jones has been extremely sure-footed in her career choices. So what’s next for her? “Well, it’s changed, because I have a family now [a nine-year-old son]. I now think, ‘What’s going to make me happy?’ I don’t work in the summer, because my son is on holiday. I only work when he’s at school.” Throughout the summer, Suranne and her husband will be helping out at a local theatre in Norfolk. Community is vital to a woman whose character and confidence were forged by growing up in a northern, working-class community with a connected, committed family around her. “With my mother and my aunties, we’d go to each other’s houses. You know, when we were kids, they’d all need help, and they were all busy women. Then the cousins had babies, and the cousins would come to the aunties’ houses and bring their little kids, because they needed a break. And so, the women in the family would rally round. I feel like all of that gave me a really good insight into what community is.” The community of theatre was vital, too, to her development. “I wasn’t hugely bright – maths, science, all of that stuff didn’t interest me. I wanted to show my skills in a different way, which was acting. I was creative. Emotionally, I was intelligent. So, finding a group of people that I could express that with, and suddenly realising I was someone who’s got something to say, was important. “Finding out that you are an important part of something is wonderful for a child. I teach kids drama now, and I love doing that. It’s one of the most beautiful things, because you just see a world in a child’s eyes, and when you give them a way to express themselves, it’s the most beautiful, wonderful thing. Keeping communities together is crucial in an age where social media and the rise of AI and technology is so fast, and when we have lost so much. “Stripping everything back and bringing communities together, that’s really important to me. In Norfolk, we have a local community-run café, and the Little Theatre where we help out, is community run. The whole world’s in there.” She may be a prime minister on our screens, but in real life this summer Suranne Jones will be on the beach or in the local theatre. And then tucked up in bed. “The beach, chippy, arcades, a bath at 8pm and in bed by 9pm. Honestly, I get up so early that by 4pm I’m starting to wane. So it’s good that we’ve met today at 11 in the morning!”
'I think possibly the French are ready to elect a woman president'
Women are held to a higher standard, says French star Julie Delpy – who has fought the patriarchy at every turn and now plays the President of France for Netflix
Add Hostage to your watchlist As Vivienne Toussaint, president of the French Republic, Julie Delpy is pitch perfect. Elegant, coiffed, robed in a beautifully cut white coat, she arrives at Downing Street to meet her British counterpart with a frisson of je ne sais quoi. But is it realistic? “I think possibly the French are ready to elect a woman president,” says Delpy, speaking to me on a Zoom call from Paris. “But not Marine le Pen.” Le Pen, the far-right candidate, ran last year, but her campaign has been somewhat derailed by financial irregularities. That, as far as Delpy considers, is le fin. “The French are more horrified by a money scandal than a sex scandal.” Well, of course. Delpy smiles. “Everyone thinks the French are very sexy, but it’s not that true. It’s not about having more sex. It’s more about the French public being more relaxed about their leaders having affairs.” Indeed. One thinks of President Mitterrand’s secret daughter, or President François Hollande on his “love scooter” coming from his love nest, or President Macron and his one-time drama teacher who is now his wife. Ooh la la, the heady stories within the Élysée Palace. “There are, however, some amazing female politicians out there,” Delpy adds, “such as Christiane Taubira (former minister of justice under Hollande). She’s my favourite person.” View oEmbed on the source website The strictures laid on female politicians resound with Delpy, who is a lauded screenplay writer and director. “In politics, women are far more quickly judged than men.” Perhaps this is intimated by a translation of her character’s name; Vivienne Toussaint (literally: living as a complete saint). “People forgive women less. In the film world, it’s the same. As a woman on set, you have to be perfect. Men are excused all sorts of behaviour, but a woman can never have a tantrum. I’m not a difficult person, or easily in a bad mood, but I know that, as a director, I can never raise my voice. It’s the same with politicians. Look at Chancellor Rachel Reeves when she cried in the House of Commons. In the UK, you reacted as if it was something truly extraordinary.” Delpy, who has performed in or created over 30 movies, now lives with her family in New York and Paris, with a joint French/US citizenship. Where is her heart? “My heart is in my chest,” she says, laughing. “I am very practical in that way. My son is at school in the US. But the situation is changing day by day in America, there are arrests every two minutes.” Will she and her family stay there? “I never cave into panic. I’m the kind of person who stays calm until there is reason to be anxious, but I like to prepare. I have a French passport and an American passport, my husband is Greek and my son is half German. “I don’t know what is going to happen, but I’m keeping calm. In the US, the structure of democracy is… wearing out. I am a Democrat, and when that is not legal any more, I will reassess whether it is safe to live there.” She was brought up in a politically and culturally aware environment. “My mother was a campaigning feminist and my father was a hippy who was born in Vietnam. It was a household where culture and politics were of equal importance. My parents had no money and they didn’t give a fig about money. There were four of us, me, my parents and my grandmother, living in a tiny apartment in the 15th Arrondissement, with no bathroom. We would wash in the kitchen sink. When I tell people in New York that they think I’m joking. But my parents took me to concerts, galleries and the theatre all the time. I was exposed to so much culture as a child.” Perhaps it’s not surprising that her career, which began at the age of 14 when the director Jean-Luc Godard cast her in his film Detective, has been distinguished by eclectic choices and a refusal to conform. “I have old enemies in the industry,” she says. “As a young person, I never complied to the rules of the patriarchy. I had a reputation of being strongheaded, because I said ‘no’ to so many directors. I was not, and am not compliant to the rules, in a sexual way. “When I was very young, I was constantly approached. I said no to everyone. That sort of thing stays with you. You get called difficult, but I refused to comply with the system, with the idea of women being the muse to the male director. I remember when I was about 20, one man approached me. He must have been about 60. He said: ‘Are you a prude? Are you frigid?’ It was disgusting. It was the same when I got to the US. Less overt, but it was still a very difficult, long road to keep my integrity.” There were exceptions. Krzysztof Kieslowski, who cast her as the star of his 1993 film Three Colours: White. And, mercifully, Godard. “He wrote me a letter when I was 15. He said: ‘Remember you are like a river. Stay strong and be the river, and remember that your enemies are like the riverbanks, they will try to control you.’” Regardless of the critical acclaim (three César nominations and two Oscar nominations), Delpy thinks her stance has affected her career. “It’s had consequences for me. It takes more effort to make films. I am banned from certain festivals. There will always be people trying to hurt my work. I earn less; I will get $3 million per film, whereas someone else might get $5 million.” Does she care? Pas du tout. “I need to look at myself in the mirror every day, and I’m with people who care about me. My life is full of love. I see people around me who have complied with the system and their personal life is a bit… empty. Because they have followed a certain road, which comes with a cost.”
Suranne Jones's political thriller Hostage affirms her key belief: “I would never want to be prime minister”
She’s at the top of her game as an actor — but run the country? No thanks. She’s in bed by 9pm.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. From Coronation Street to Downing Street. The rise and rise of Suranne Jones goes on, and now she’s in charge. And she didn’t even have to audition for the role of prime minister. “No!” she laughs, sitting in a fancy suite in London’s Netflix HQ. “Me and Matt Charman, the writer, have known each other for a long time. We always wanted to do a project together, and I suddenly got an urge to do a political drama. I’ve always loved shows that take the viewer into the halls of power. Matt had done Bridge of Spies and Treason, so I knew that he was the person to go to. We bounced ideas back and forth and then we came up with this idea of me as the prime minister.” But not a lone, Margaret Thatcher figure. “I didn’t want to be the only woman in a room full of men, but one working with another female leader. That’s the thing that’s different about it.” Hostage, a five-part political thriller produced for Netflix, hinges on the relationship between British prime minister, Abigail Dalton (Jones), and France’s female president, Vivienne Toussaint (played by Julie Delpy). Women working together, not pitted against one another. Eventually. “Women are always put against one another, and these two fall for it,” says Jones. “At first there’s a lot of game-playing, and it’s not until later on that they start to see each other properly and realise how they can help each other.” How did she research the role? “We spoke to people in positions of power. We went to the House of Commons, and we watched Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer battle against each other. We met with the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle. We looked at Nicola Sturgeon. And Jacinda Ardern [the former prime minister of New Zealand]. We looked at Theresa May. And Lucy Powell [MP for Manchester Central]. We had fun developing it. It made me think about what being a woman of power means, and what it costs.” Prime Minister Dalton comes with baggage: a husband (Ashley Thomas), who is a doctor for Médecins sans Frontières, their daughter and also her elderly father Max (James Cosmo). Each one is gravely challenged by the fact that she is prime minister. “The whole thing is about you, your family unit, how women split themselves between work and home, what the cost is, how you want to be portrayed, how the world perceives you as a woman, and what you have to battle with, before you start your day. All of that is going on before you put your heels on. And you might not want to put your heels on. And your power suit. But actually, you have to in order to make a mark in the room.” Clothes play a subtle but crucial part. Delpy is classy in navy and ivory couture, a sort of Catherine Deneuve figure; Jones is smart M&S. “That the French president is effortlessly elegant was important, because her character is so confident. And she’s older, so she has this kind of wisdom on her shoulders, but she’s still making a lot of mistakes within her own personal life. With my character, we wanted to use high-street clothes, as well as British designers. We really thought about it and when you first see me, I’m in something like a Reiss suit with a Bella Freud shirt. But the next time you see her, she’s had an interaction with the French president and she’s dressed just slightly better.” Jones plays a politician who starts with high ideals, and principles, but who has to face up to the compromise that politicians often find themselves forced into, despite themselves. “With politicians, the thing I was interested in, was the hope you give when you’re running for election, and the promises you make. Then the moment you get elected, and the door shuts, you have to go out and tell the world, ‘Actually, we can’t do this, this and this.’ So then everyone that voted for you, has a new opinion of you because you promised all of this stuff, and then you can’t deliver it.” Would she ever want to be prime minister? “I would never want to be prime minister, even for a day. I would never choose it.” Because politicians can’t be truly honest? “Well, they could, but if they were, we’d all be gobsmacked, wouldn’t we? Also, I like to be in bed by 9pm. That’s another reason why I couldn’t be prime minister. There’s far too much to read late into the night. I don’t know how they do it.” That’s why the show is called Hostage. Yes, her husband is taken hostage for real, but Dalton is also hostage to the job. “She’s hostage to Number Ten, to the rules.” Is that pressure more intense for a female PM? “I think it’s harder for women, as it is with most jobs. Breaking down the patriarchy isn’t an easy task. It’s really hard. When a woman stands up, there’s so many labels that she has to fulfil. Abigail Dalton is one person when she’s in front of the cameras but as soon as the door shuts, she’s a right old sweary Mary. And she’s human.” Suranne Jones was born and raised in Chadderton, Greater Manchester and, after performing with Oldham Theatre Workshop and gaining a BTEC in Performing Arts, she went straight into the business. “I started on Coronation Street and I worked my way up. Corrie was like my own form of university and I loved it. And I did my time in theatre and loved it.” Most people will know her from her impressive roster of roles in TV drama; Detective Rachel Bailey in Scott & Bailey, GP Gemma Foster in Doctor Foster (for which she won a Bafta), as well as Vigil and Gentleman Jack. She has her own production company, TeamAkers, that she runs with husband Laurence Akers. Say the company name out loud; it’s witty. She’s also ensuring that other women are able to follow behind her. Not only does Hostage have two astonishing female leads, it has women throughout the team. “We have two female directors. I wanted the best people for the job – but the best people for the job were always going to be women. And Netflix agreed. If women don’t use women writers, or directors, or camera operators, no new women will come up in the industry. We need to train women. And we also need to have older women on screen.” Looking like older women? “Well, as I’m frightened to death of any kind of Botox or anything like that, I’ll get the granny parts!” She reflects a little. “My auntie was talking to me the other day. She said, ‘People always ask me, when did Suranne break her nose?’ I’ve never broken my nose, but because it’s not perfectly straight, or whatever… Anyway, character is about what shines from within. It’s not about fixing what’s outside.” To date, Jones has been extremely sure-footed in her career choices. So what’s next for her? “Well, it’s changed, because I have a family now [a nine-year-old son]. I now think, ‘What’s going to make me happy?’ I don’t work in the summer, because my son is on holiday. I only work when he’s at school.” Throughout the summer, Suranne and her husband will be helping out at a local theatre in Norfolk. Community is vital to a woman whose character and confidence were forged by growing up in a northern, working-class community with a connected, committed family around her. “With my mother and my aunties, we’d go to each other’s houses. You know, when we were kids, they’d all need help, and they were all busy women. Then the cousins had babies, and the cousins would come to the aunties’ houses and bring their little kids, because they needed a break. And so, the women in the family would rally round. I feel like all of that gave me a really good insight into what community is.” The community of theatre was vital, too, to her development. “I wasn’t hugely bright – maths, science, all of that stuff didn’t interest me. I wanted to show my skills in a different way, which was acting. I was creative. Emotionally, I was intelligent. So, finding a group of people that I could express that with, and suddenly realising I was someone who’s got something to say, was important. “Finding out that you are an important part of something is wonderful for a child. I teach kids drama now, and I love doing that. It’s one of the most beautiful things, because you just see a world in a child’s eyes, and when you give them a way to express themselves, it’s the most beautiful, wonderful thing. Keeping communities together is crucial in an age where social media and the rise of AI and technology is so fast, and when we have lost so much. “Stripping everything back and bringing communities together, that’s really important to me. In Norfolk, we have a local community-run café, and the Little Theatre where we help out, is community run. The whole world’s in there.” She may be a prime minister on our screens, but in real life this summer Suranne Jones will be on the beach or in the local theatre. And then tucked up in bed. “The beach, chippy, arcades, a bath at 8pm and in bed by 9pm. Honestly, I get up so early that by 4pm I’m starting to wane. So it’s good that we’ve met today at 11 in the morning!” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Hostage is coming to Netflix on Thursday 21st August. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream. Add Hostage to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Ashley Thomas AKA Bashy reveals biggest hope for Netflix drama Hostage and how acting came before rapping
The award-winning rapper returns to acting, his first passion.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. In Netflix's new thriller Hostage, Ashley Thomas plays Dr Alex Anderson, the husband of Prime Minister Abigail Dalton and a medic with Médecins sans Frontières who is taken hostage while working in French Guiana. “I read War Doctor by David Nott [the lauded Welsh surgeon who has worked in disaster and war zones across the world] which sort of anchored my character. I also spoke to a doctor from Médecins sans Frontières, who had worked in Haiti. But they are also people with a regular life, and that helped me. At the bottom of it, Alex plays football, he goes to the pub and does what the rest of us do. It was about not getting drawn into acting like a doctor.” Many viewers will know Thomas as the rapper Bashy. Tracks from his debut album Catch Me If You Can were nominated for a slew of awards, and his 2024 album Being Poor Is Expensive won him both the MOBO [Music of Black Origin] album of the year, and best hip-hop act. This year, his track How Black Men Lose their Smile was nominated for a Novello for best contemporary song, and he also played Glastonbury in June. So, is he a rapper who acts on the side? Actually, it’s more the other way round. “I started out as an actor. My mum put me into acting workshops and then I trained as an actor at the Brit school. Acting was my first passion and music came later on.” He thinks that the racial diversity represented by his on-screen marriage to Suranne Jones is par for the course, pointing to the fact that the Conservative party had two people of colour as leader, one of whom was prime minister. “Hostage is art reflecting real life. My hope is that viewers will be open about it and people will just enjoy the characters. That’s what I want people to talk about. The characters and the powerful performances.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Hostage is coming to Netflix on Thursday 21st August. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream. Add Hostage to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Hostage star Julie Delpy argues France is ready for a female leader - but not Marine Le Pen
Women are held to a higher standard, says the French star who has fought the patriarchy at every turn.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. As Vivienne Toussaint, president of the French Republic, Julie Delpy is pitch perfect in Hostage. Elegant, coiffed, robed in a beautifully cut white coat, she arrives at Downing Street to meet her British counterpart with a frisson of je ne sais quoi. But is it realistic? “I think possibly the French are ready to elect a woman president,” says Delpy, speaking to me on a Zoom call from Paris. “But not Marine le Pen.” Le Pen, the far-right candidate, ran last year, but her campaign has been somewhat derailed by financial irregularities. That, as far as Delpy considers, is le fin. “The French are more horrified by a money scandal than a sex scandal.” Well, of course. Delpy smiles. “Everyone thinks the French are very sexy, but it’s not that true. It’s not about having more sex. It’s more about the French public being more relaxed about their leaders having affairs.” Indeed. One thinks of President Mitterrand’s secret daughter, or President François Hollande on his “love scooter” coming from his love nest, or President Macron and his one-time drama teacher who is now his wife. Ooh la la, the heady stories within the Élysée Palace. “There are, however, some amazing female politicians out there,” Delpy adds, “such as Christiane Taubira (former minister of justice under Hollande). She’s my favourite person.” The strictures laid on female politicians resound with Delpy, who is a lauded screenplay writer and director. “In politics, women are far more quickly judged than men.” Perhaps this is intimated by a translation of her character’s name; Vivienne Toussaint (literally: living as a complete saint). “People forgive women less. In the film world, it’s the same. As a woman on set, you have to be perfect. Men are excused all sorts of behaviour, but a woman can never have a tantrum. I’m not a difficult person, or easily in a bad mood, but I know that, as a director, I can never raise my voice. It’s the same with politicians. Look at Chancellor Rachel Reeves when she cried in the House of Commons. In the UK, you reacted as if it was something truly extraordinary.” Delpy, who has performed in or created over 30 movies, now lives with her family in New York and Paris, with a joint French/US citizenship. Where is her heart? “My heart is in my chest,” she says, laughing. “I am very practical in that way. My son is at school in the US. But the situation is changing day by day in America, there are arrests every two minutes.” Will she and her family stay there? “I never cave into panic. I’m the kind of person who stays calm until there is reason to be anxious, but I like to prepare. I have a French passport and an American passport, my husband is Greek and my son is half German. “I don’t know what is going to happen, but I’m keeping calm. In the US, the structure of democracy is… wearing out. I am a Democrat, and when that is not legal any more, I will reassess whether it is safe to live there.” She was brought up in a politically and culturally aware environment. “My mother was a campaigning feminist and my father was a hippy who was born in Vietnam. It was a household where culture and politics were of equal importance. My parents had no money and they didn’t give a fig about money. There were four of us, me, my parents and my grandmother, living in a tiny apartment in the 15th Arrondissement, with no bathroom. We would wash in the kitchen sink. When I tell people in New York that they think I’m joking. But my parents took me to concerts, galleries and the theatre all the time. I was exposed to so much culture as a child.” Perhaps it’s not surprising that her career, which began at the age of 14 when the director Jean-Luc Godard cast her in his film Detective, has been distinguished by eclectic choices and a refusal to conform. “I have old enemies in the industry,” she says. “As a young person, I never complied to the rules of the patriarchy. I had a reputation of being strong-headed, because I said ‘no’ to so many directors. I was not, and am not compliant to the rules, in a sexual way. “When I was very young, I was constantly approached. I said no to everyone. That sort of thing stays with you. You get called difficult, but I refused to comply with the system, with the idea of women being the muse to the male director. I remember when I was about 20, one man approached me. He must have been about 60. He said: ‘Are you a prude? Are you frigid?’ It was disgusting. It was the same when I got to the US. Less overt, but it was still a very difficult, long road to keep my integrity.” There were exceptions. Krzysztof Kieslowski, who cast her as the star of his 1993 film Three Colours: White. And, mercifully, Godard. “He wrote me a letter when I was 15. He said: ‘Remember you are like a river. Stay strong and be the river, and remember that your enemies are like the riverbanks, they will try to control you.’” Regardless of the critical acclaim (three César nominations and two Oscar nominations), Delpy thinks her stance has affected her career. “It’s had consequences for me. It takes more effort to make films. I am banned from certain festivals. There will always be people trying to hurt my work. I earn less; I will get $3 million per film, whereas someone else might get $5 million.” Does she care? Pas du tout. “I need to look at myself in the mirror every day, and I’m with people who care about me. My life is full of love. I see people around me who have complied with the system and their personal life is a bit… empty. Because they have followed a certain road, which comes with a cost.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Hostage is coming to Netflix on Thursday 21st August. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream. Add Hostage to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
'We were covered with lice and had no proper clothes'
13-year-old Olga Henderson was imprisoned in a camp in Singapore on VJ Day, 15 August 1945. Now, 80 years on, she tells her story of punishments, hunger and the undying dream of going home.
Add VJ Day: We Were There to your watchlist To some, the war in Japan is a distant appendage to the horrors of the Second World War in Europe. Not to Olga Henderson (née Morris). Now 93, she was interned aged ten, effectively as a civilian British prisoner of war along with her family. Olga, her parents and three siblings, Mary, Peter and George, were held captive for three years, first in Japan’s infamous Changi Prison, then in Sime Road Camp, a former RAF base in Singapore. It was little more than a couple of huts run under a system of starvation and fear. By the end of the war, these miserable barracks housed over 4,500 European civilians, including 328 children. On VJ Day, 15 August 1945, Olga was 13, filthy, emaciated, barefoot, her developing body clothed in nothing other than a pair of underpants and a dirty rag. “We were in front of the hut, where there was about eight feet of sandy mud, and we heard the plane,” she says. “What looked like confetti started raining down. But it wasn’t confetti. It was leaflets saying the Allies had won and the war was over. We started playing with the leaflets.” Her description of life at Sime is jawdropping. They ate nothing more than scraps of vegetables and scrapings of rice filched by her mother, who was the camp cook for the Japanese soldiers. “We were like walking bamboo sticks,” she says. “We were covered with lice. We had no scissors to cut our nails, no proper clothes and no food.” The trauma began in 1942 when she and her family were living in British Malaya (now Malaysia) when it and Singapore were both invaded by the Japanese. The family had to flee their home with half an hour’s notice. A British soldier knocked at the door and said the invaders were just behind. After failing to gain passage on an evacuation ship, the family were captured by the Japanese, held in a field and marched to Changi jail. Despite this trauma, she says the family never considered escaping from the camp. “Never. You never bothered planning escape, because the punishment was too horrendous. They say in Singapore you can still walk along a certain road and hear cries of pain. That’s where they tortured escapees. My brother Peter was 11 and was whipped for picking up half a piece of fruit that had fallen from a tree. It was regarded as stealing, and stealing was a very serious crime. We would try very hard never to anger the Japanese guards. They only had to put their hand on their cane and we’d fall into line. They went into a temper quickly, because they were treated brutally, too. They were trying to carry out orders from above and trying to be perfect. So, of course, that travelled down to us.” Yet starvation made the children reckless. “My friend Eileen got up at night and dug up some roots from a tapioca plant. She put the plant back into the ground, but of course the next day it began to wilt. She was caught and her punishment was being made to kneel in the sun all day. Her father, who was in the men’s camp, saw her through the barbed wire. He protested that his daughter was being tortured. They beat him up.” The sun was a terrible punishment. “We had to work in the fields all day, and you were lucky if you had anything to shade you from the bright sun. My father went blind in camp, and my mother and sister eventually lost their sight, too. My smallest brother George, who was only five when we were captured, was the worst affected by the lack of food. He grew up to be a normal height, but all his organs had been starved of nutrition, so they didn’t develop properly. In the end, he died of a heart attack.” Hers was an extraordinary childhood, if you can call it that. Christmas was celebrated with seven pieces of meat floating in a tub. At Changi, there was a modicum of infrastructure. She and other girls were encouraged to join a Girl Guide troupe run by an internee, the remarkable Elizabeth Ennis. The girls would meet once a week in a corner of the exercise yard. As a surprise present for their captain, they managed to secrete scraps of cloth, which they stitched into a quilt for her. It’s now on show at the Imperial War Museum. Toys came in the form of paper dolls, and school lessons did take place. In Sime Road Camp, however, there were no toys or books; school lessons for the children were led by adult prisoners, in the form of chanting by rote. “Our teacher Julie would put some dirt in a piece of cloth and bind it into a sort of ball,” remembers Olga. “She would throw it to us and say, ‘Three times eight,’ and whoever she threw it to would have to say the answer as they caught the ball.” When the Allied plane flew over Sime, Olga and other prisoners were digging a large hole at the foot of a hill. She didn’t know it, but they were digging a mass grave. “We were told it was for food storage. I later learnt it was so the guards could put us all in there and blow us up. They didn’t have enough food for us, so they were going to kill us.” Two years ago, Olga published a memoir, In the Shadow of the Rising Sun. “I had no interest in writing my memories, but I was prompted to do so after experiencing Covid. The strictures of getting food and of seeing people brought it all back.” Her one sadness now is that she feels the reasons behind her harrowing experience have been forgotten. They are not forgotten by her; having been denied so much at a young age, she keeps her clothes carefully and never wastes food. “People don’t know about the Japanese war. They have no clue it ever happened. What are they teaching young ones now?” Did she ever think she would perish? “That was the funny thing. I didn’t think I wasn’t going to make it. We always thought we were going to go home. And after they dropped the leaflets, they started dropping bread.” Olga features in We Were There (Wednesday BBC2) and will be part of Friday’s VJ Day 80 coverage on BBC1
Take an exclusive first look at Suranne Jones as a British PM in Netflix's anticipated new thriller Hostage
Hostage will be on Netflix from 21 August. Fancy attending an exclusive screening in central London, followed by a Q&A with Suranne Jones and Julie Delpy and a drinks reception? We have a limited number of tickets to give away to RT readers for this Netflix event at the Ham Yard Hotel on Monday 18 August 2025 from 6.30pm to 10pm. Tickets will be allocated on a first come, first served basis (and a maximum of two per person). Click here. Mocking up 10 Downing Street was a crucial element to get right in the new Netflix thriller Hostage, in which Suranne Jones plays embattled Prime Minister Abigail Dalton. When her husband is thrown into mortal peril abroad, Dalton has to cope with personal dramas as well as a Cabinet that is ranged against her, while at the same time keeping a doubtful nation on side with regular press appeals from the Downing Street podium, a perfect replica of which was recreated for filming.“That was thrilling to do,” says Jones, who also executive produced the five-part series. “We built the outside of Downing Street so that we could have that interaction. It was just great, being outside No 10 with all the press attention, coming in and going out, recognisable moments that have been in all our lives. Standing at the lectern! Thrilling!” Did it give her a taste of what it would be like to be PM? “I would never want to be prime minister, not even for a day. It’s hard. And harder for women, as it is in most areas. We looked at Nicola Sturgeon, Theresa May, Jacinda Ardern, how they managed and at what cost. Breaking down the patriarchy is not an easy task.” The series features not one but two female world leaders, as it co-stars French film legend Julie Delpy as French President Vivienne Toussaint, who is on a state visit to London. So Delpy also gets to walk the most famous street in politics. View oEmbed on the source website Is the idea of a female French president realistic? “I think the French are possibly ready to elect a woman president,” says Delpy. Madame la president is, of course, extremely alluring. “Everyone thinks the French are very sexy, and having sex all the time. It’s not really true. The reality is that it’s not that we have more sex, it’s that we’re a little more relaxed about people having affairs.” And apparently that dates from an older leadership system. “Yes, it comes from our kings. They were all over the place with women. They would have up to 20 lovers at any one time, and didn’t want them to take showers. They were crazy!”
The pressure of organising the RAF’s VE Day flypast sits lightly on Squadron Leader Dan Wilkes – but its significance is monumental
The 80th anniversary of VE Day is on Thursday 8 May, but will be marked throughout the week from 5 May. Add VE Day 80 to your watchlist There will be no witnesses, bar wind turbines and the odd fish. But at 12.45pm on Monday 5 May, high above the North Sea, an assembly of two dozen RAF planes will gather and fly towards London. At 1.45pm, the formation will fly down the Mall. The RAF VE Day flypast will be led by a sole Lancaster bomber, one of the few planes remaining from the original war fleet. Forty seconds behind will be three aircraft from the air mobility fleet. Then comes “the faster stuff”, according to event organiser Squadron Leader Dan Wilkes. Wilkes himself will be in third place, piloting a RC135 Rivet Joint surveillance plane with two smaller fighter aircraft on each side of him. That sounds pretty hairy. “Yes, the fighter planes will be about 20 feet from my wingtips,” says Wilkes calmly. But then Wilkes is a calm sort of guy. Now 32, he’s been flying since the age of 13. “My great grandfather was an engineer officer in the RAF,” he explains. “His job was to get Spitfires ready for the front line. My grandfather was also an engineer at RAF Cosford. I’d go there as a three-year-old to watch the RAF show from his house. All I wanted to do was join up.” So he did, signing up for the Air Cadets while he was at secondary school in Birmingham and achieving an RAF scholarship that sponsored him towards an aviation qualification. “I got my private pilot’s license when I was 16. I could fly my family around England before I could drive them,” he says. Based with 51 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Wilkes’s day job requires flying alongside other planes at a height of 40,000 feet at around 500mph. So, doing it over London is going to be a breeze? Not quite. There will be a lot to think about. As well as the Lancaster 40 seconds in front of him, and the fighter planes, there will be nine Red Arrows, with their trademark trails, 40 seconds behind him, and then, 40 seconds behind them, a quartet delivering a “signature” package in the sky. Quite the aerial salute. “I’ve helped organise the flypasts for the Queen’s Jubilee and the King’s coronation in the past,” he says. “This one, though, is special. Each of these planes is part of a story to commemorate past sacrifice and look towards what we do in the world. And the flypast will make parallels, between then and now.” He explains why the crowds in London won’t be seeing that totemic symbol of British fighting spirit, the single-seater Spitfire. “The Spitfires are fuel limited; you can only get 30 minutes at a push from them. So, we will be deploying our four Spitfires for smaller VE Day displays elsewhere in the UK. The Lancaster can manage about 21/2 hours, so it will stay airborne after the London flypast and go to subsequent events.” He’s been planning this day since last September and it’s similar to what he does for the RAF normally. “We fly in formation for a conflict, or while delivering humanitarian aid,” he explains. “In a sense, the flypast is in the same vein as any operation we might do around the world.” The whole event will be done and dusted in about three minutes. Then all the planes will disperse to their original bases. “You don’t get the chance to take it all in when you’re in the plane,” says Wilkes. “It’s actually when you get back in the afternoon, and speak to friends and family, or see it on the news, that’s when you get that lump in the throat.” He knows this is probably the last time VE Day will be acknowledged by those who actually fought in the days leading up to that historic moment. “That is why we use the historic planes. We put them into a composition where we can thank people for what they did. This flypast is for the generation who sacrificed themselves for victory in Europe.” Amid much commentary about the size of the UK’s armed forces, he’s proud of what the event might signify today. “There are lessons from how we flew in the Second World War,” he says. “How the Air Force is capable, how it protects allies in Europe, including Ukraine. The key to winning the war, and to what VE Day means, is that there were alliances. Not just with the US, but across Europe. And even 80 years on, VE Day can make us realise how the security of our nation is dependent on the armed forces. That the RAF is ready to defend the UK. We are ready to fly and fight.”
Gareth Malone is back with an Easter choir – but why did he disappear for five years? And how did JS Bach save him?
Add Gareth Malone's Messiah to your watchlist Gareth Malone is back conducting choral music on our screens; as infectiously enthusiastic and impossibly youthful-looking as ever. The Peter Pan of Do-Re-Mi is attempting to coax classical perfection from eight absolute beginners, who’ve never before sung in a classical choir. In just seven weeks from first audition, the novice singers will join the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales for a performance of Handel’s Messiah in Cardiff’s Llandaff Cathedral. It sounds like a huge undertaking, and one that the choirmaster takes very seriously. “It’s about eight people encountering Handel; I chose it because of that. It’s a very wholesome thing to do.” But it’s also embedded within his core: “Messiah is a text I’ve known my whole life. I was introduced to it by my parents; they would sing the Halleluiah Chorus while doing the washing up.” After listening to it on vinyl, he was taken to see Handel’s most famous oratorio performed. “I was seven or eight. I don’t wish to denigrate TV or radio, but it’s not the same as going to the Royal Festival Hall and hearing a massive orchestra play and a choir of 200 sing. “From an early age, I had very powerful reactions to music. I was overwhelmed by it. I still am. Handel comes from a deep place. It is sincere. It is considered, but there is also a lightness to it. He wrote it in a hurry; almost as if he had divine inspiration. You can see it from the score. It transmits that energy when you are conducting and performing it.” That energy is very much not the sort of thing you can get from artificial intelligence. “AI,” he snorts. “It’s a tool. So is a hammer, but you don’t use it all day. As a child, I grew cress. We made a sandwich with it, and I ate it. That was enormous for me. I did something in the real world, not via a screen. You can’t get a computer to sing Messiah and be in an orchestra. It’s organic, and real, and moving. Tech is useful, but when I turn to my piano, it’s real and vibrating.” Malone, best known for series such as The Choir: Military Wives and Boys Don’t Sing, used to be on our screens every year. And then he wasn’t. He was in talks to do his choral magic in the States, but in 2017 chose to walk away. “I had a real case of burnout. I was on a treadmill, going from one project to another. Each got bigger and bigger, and you got to the point when you didn’t have anything bigger to give. Launching in America was very much part of that.” Then came something utterly unplanned: the pandemic. “I didn’t earn any money in 2021 because of Covid. The first year was OK but then, suddenly, all TV, all commissioning, ground to a halt. I was just at home. I got back into the minutiae of looking after the kids, getting their swimming kit ready, cooking their supper. I don’t regret it, because it gave me five years of being at home.” All that sounds great, but what about his creation, Gareth Malone, Boyish Choral Superstar? Did he worry that the public might forget him? “One hundred per cent,” he says, with a candour that’s unusual from a celebrity. “One hundred per cent. My livelihood has been ‘being Gareth Malone on TV’.” He pauses. Was it a crisis? “Yes, it was.” Was he panicking? “Yes, I was. I definitely had moments of panic.” How did he manage? “I confided in my wife [English teacher Becky Malone]. That’s what partners are there for.” Plus, routine. “I would force myself to get up, put a clean shirt on and go to work in my studio. I would work on music and try to generate projects.” And then what? More anxiety. “I panicked that it was all about the streamers, or iPlayer, and nobody was watching TV. I would read [trade magazine] Broadcast, which would be all doom and gloom.” Did he fear he was not diverse enough – too white, too male, too classically orientated? “I’d be lying if I said that didn’t cross my mind. All those demons cross your mind. The one that really concerned me was overfamiliarity. I tried not to spread myself too thinly, but… Anyway, I would work on my music, and try to generate projects. And, slowly but surely, stuff started to happen.” Alongside his wife, one other person helped him: the 17th-century composer Johann Sebastian Bach (Malone took on Bach’s St John Passion for his Easter 2024 series). “I’d listen to Bach. His music is perfect. And he understood loss and grief. Music is always the thing I come back to. That’s what drives me.” And now? “Post-Covid, everything has been more solid. I just know what I am about now. I’m passionate about music education and music.” Like many others, including the pop singer Ed Sheeran, Malone fears that future generations are in danger of missing out, due to a dearth of music education at state schools. “What music does is promote feelings of success. You do one rehearsal, and another, and you feel as if you’re achieving something. I’ve been in music education for 30 years, and I’ve not seen any sea change by any government. I hoped my work might bang the drum for the importance of music; it’s essential to us as human beings. It has the potential to change lives. It’s not just an add-on.” We discuss the fact that Cardiff University recently closed its School of Music. “Wales, the land of song! That was announced when we were recording this series there. It’s so sad. Some of our singers in the Chorus of Wales were students at Cardiff University. We led the world in music for years. Now it’s getting to a tipping point.” He pauses, exasperated. “We all know what it takes to make a musician; it’s a lifetime of commitment and experience. We now have a mental health crisis. Why is music not promoted? Why not give someone a violin and encourage them to play? Why not get the lives of young people to be more fun and rewarding before the crisis hits? Nobody remembers doing maths on a Thursday. But young people all remember when they sang in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” Part one of Gareth Malone’s Messiah is on Good Friday 10.45am BBC1. Part two and the concert itself are on Easter Day. Catch up via iPlayer
Gareth Malone on Messiah and why he walked away from US success: "I had a real case of burnout"
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Gareth Malone is back with an Easter choir – but why did he disappear for five years? And how did JS Bach save him? Gareth Malone is back conducting choral music on our screens; as infectiously enthusiastic and impossibly youthful-looking as ever. The Peter Pan of Do-Re-Mi is attempting to coax classical perfection from eight absolute beginners, who’ve never before sung in a classical choir. In just seven weeks from first audition, the novice singers will join the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales for a performance of Handel’s Messiah in Cardiff’s Llandaff Cathedral. It sounds like a huge undertaking, and one that the choirmaster takes very seriously. "It’s about eight people encountering Handel; I chose it because of that. It’s a very wholesome thing to do." But it’s also embedded within his core: "Messiah is a text I’ve known my whole life. I was introduced to it by my parents; they would sing the Halleluiah Chorus while doing the washing up." After listening to it on vinyl, he was taken to see Handel’s most famous oratorio performed. "I was seven or eight. I don’t wish to denigrate TV or radio, but it’s not the same as going to the Royal Festival Hall and hearing a massive orchestra play and a choir of 200 sing. "From an early age, I had very powerful reactions to music. I was overwhelmed by it. I still am. Handel comes from a deep place. It is sincere. It is considered, but there is also a lightness to it. He wrote it in a hurry; almost as if he had divine inspiration. You can see it from the score. It transmits that energy when you are conducting and performing it." That energy is very much not the sort of thing you can get from artificial intelligence. "AI," he snorts. "It’s a tool. So is a hammer, but you don’t use it all day. As a child, I grew cress. We made a sandwich with it, and I ate it. That was enormous for me. I did something in the real world, not via a screen. "You can’t get a computer to sing Messiah and be in an orchestra. It’s organic, and real, and moving. Tech is useful, but when I turn to my piano, it’s real and vibrating." Malone, best known for series such as The Choir: Military Wives and Boys Don’t Sing, used to be on our screens every year. And then he wasn’t. He was in talks to do his choral magic in the States, but in 2017 chose to walk away. "I had a real case of burnout. I was on a treadmill, going from one project to another. Each got bigger and bigger, and you got to the point when you didn’t have anything bigger to give. Launching in America was very much part of that." Then came something utterly unplanned: the pandemic. "I didn’t earn any money in 2021 because of Covid. The first year was OK but then, suddenly, all TV, all commissioning, ground to a halt. I was just at home. I got back into the minutiae of looking after the kids, getting their swimming kit ready, cooking their supper. I don’t regret it, because it gave me five years of being at home.” All that sounds great, but what about his creation, Gareth Malone, Boyish Choral Superstar? Did he worry that the public might forget him? "One hundred per cent," he says, with a candour that’s unusual from a celebrity. "One hundred per cent. My livelihood has been 'being Gareth Malone on TV.'" He pauses. Was it a crisis? "Yes, it was." Was he panicking? "Yes, I was. I definitely had moments of panic." How did he manage? "I confided in my wife [English teacher Becky Malone]. That’s what partners are there for." Plus, routine. "I would force myself to get up, put a clean shirt on and go to work in my studio. I would work on music and try to generate projects." And then what? More anxiety. "I panicked that it was all about the streamers, or iPlayer, and nobody was watching TV. I would read [trade magazine] Broadcast, which would be all doom and gloom." Did he fear he was not diverse enough – too white, too male, too classically orientated? "I’d be lying if I said that didn’t cross my mind. All those demons cross your mind. The one that really concerned me was overfamiliarity. I tried not to spread myself too thinly, but… Anyway, I would work on my music, and try to generate projects. And, slowly but surely, stuff started to happen." Alongside his wife, one other person helped him: the 17th-century composer Johann Sebastian Bach (Malone took on Bach’s St John Passion for his Easter 2024 series). "I’d listen to Bach. His music is perfect. And he understood loss and grief. Music is always the thing I come back to. That’s what drives me." And now? "Post-Covid, everything has been more solid. I just know what I am about now. I’m passionate about music education and music." Like many others, including the pop singer Ed Sheeran, Malone fears that future generations are in danger of missing out, due to a dearth of music education at state schools. "What music does is promote feelings of success. You do one rehearsal, and another, and you feel as if you’re achieving something. "I’ve been in music education for 30 years, and I’ve not seen any sea change by any government. I hoped my work might bang the drum for the importance of music; it’s essential to us as human beings. It has the potential to change lives. It’s not just an add-on." We discuss the fact that Cardiff University recently closed its School of Music. "Wales, the land of song! That was announced when we were recording this series there. It's so sad. Some of our singers in the Chorus of Wales were students at Cardiff University. We led the world in music for years. Now it’s getting to a tipping point." He pauses, exasperated. "We all know what it takes to make a musician; it’s a lifetime of commitment and experience. We now have a mental health crisis. Why is music not promoted? Why not give someone a violin and encourage them to play? Why not get the lives of young people to be more fun and rewarding before the crisis hits? Nobody remembers doing maths on a Thursday. But young people all remember when they sang in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Gareth Malone's Messiah airs on BBC One and iPlayer on Friday 18th April. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
From ritual vomiting to suffocating goats... Bruce Parry is pushing himself further than ever
Add Tribe with Bruce Parry to your watchlist There is vomiting, and then there is full-on, projectile expurgation. After the first episode of Bruce Parry’s new series, during which he is epically sick standing in a tributary of the Amazon river, I felt I knew the spew almost as much as the man. He didn’t even have a bug. Parry willingly drank a local concoction designed to detox the body in just this way. The likeable Parry, who first leapt onto our screens in a variety of skimpy loin cloths in the original Tribe two decades ago before quitting TV to make a feature film (Tawai: a Voice from the Forest), is back on our screens on the trail of radical tribal custom. It’s his first series since Arctic in 2011. Nothing, it seems, is too challenging. He’ll have his nose pierced with a bone, he’ll be sick in a river, he’ll sleep on a dung floor in a mud hut... Why go through it again? “Well, I am on a continuum,” says Parry, laughing. “I am still on this journey learning about how tribal people can offer some solutions to the world’s problems, and I wanted to share some of the things I have learnt. I feel very lucky they have allowed me back. So much of what indigenous people have to share actually feels more important now than it did the first time.” For the new BBC series, Parry is the first foreign visitor to live within the communities. Filming much of his experience with his own camera, he goes deep inside the Colombian rainforest to visit the Waimaha people, while the second episode sees him walking for a day to find the Mucubal, who live in the Namib desert, southern Angola, and the third follows him to a tropical island in Indonesia to stay with the Marapu. If you can manage the nasty details on top of all that vomiting (eating witchetty grubs, watching an 11-year-old child have her lower teeth knocked out without anaesthetic), you will learn a lot about people whose lifestyle is definitely different. Parry is an enthusiastic and winning guide, and willing to laugh at himself en route. No bodily function is out of bounds. “Right, off for the first dump of the trip,” he confides in us on day two of his Angolan adventure, heading off into the bush. “As for cleaning myself up afterwards…I have been told to use, er… a stone. So I will!” Classic Parry. Definitely out of his comfort zone but in such an engaging way that you, the viewer, are brought along, too. “You have to challenge yourself, otherwise you never do anything,” he says. I am so inspired by this that, after our Zoom call, I sign up to run the Valencia Marathon. Could I, however, suffocate a live goat? Parry can and does. On arrival in an Angolan village, he received the gift of a spotted, fluffy goat from the head of the tribe, from his herd of 150. “Thank you so much. What would you suggest I do with this goat?” he asks, politely. The response? “Kill it. You must kill it. Now.” He didn’t want to cause offence, plus it was on the next day’s menu. So, he had to do it. Without a knife, which does not keep the whole animal intact and is seen as disrespectful. “It was difficult, suffocating a goat. But I could be the most ethically minded person at home in the UK but still by simply getting on a bus, I will have a much larger impact on the planet than any one of these people. Who am I to judge them?” Parry is very keen not to act like the superior white man on a grand tour, and on the whole, he succeeds. “These children have never seen a white person before,” he says before saying hello to about five small Namibian children in a hut. Cue screams of horror from the children. “That’s quite a greeting,” he laughs. “I definitely have this effect on some people sometimes.” But quite soon into his three-week stay, he is considered part of the furniture, accepted by the Mucubal with amused interest. Vomiting with the Waimaha is definitely a Parry takeaway. The tribe see it as a perfectly normal cleansing ritual prior to a night of special festivities. The festival, which goes on until dawn, involves getting high on some natural herb, after which there is much shouting, dancing and throwing up. All night long. How different is this from a Saturday night in many British cities? “I think there is a difference: theirs is a ritual with a beginning and an end, and the young people are overseen by elders who have experience of such events.” How did he get on, taking the strong stuff but still having to interview people and talk to camera? “I feel a sense of trepidation, because you don’t quite know how your body is going to react. It’s pretty hardcore. But there is always something positive to be found. These people are much more aware of what they consume. They have an empathetic relationship with nature, with the forest.” He’d be brilliant on I’m a Celebrity, I say. Being showered by a zillion cockroaches would be a walk in the park for Parry. “I have been asked to be on all these reality shows with physical challenges. I have always turned them down.” In his quest to advocate for indigenous peoples, Parry sportingly allows himself to be bitten by ants in one show, while competing in a fist fight (where the aim is to draw blood) during another. But seeing others in pain is difficult. In the Angolan episode he is invited to observe a young girl willingly getting her lower teeth knocked out with a bloody stone (it is a sign of beauty), plus two young boys being circumcised. Here, the smile fades somewhat. “I struggled watching the young girl go through her ritual, but the male circumcision was definitely the hardest experience. Not only was I experiencing the pain of the boys, but also a deeper cultural pain. Why do we all, all of us, continue with certain practices, which don’t have a reason any more? It is a big part of why I am there. Why do we do certain things if they are so painful?” The tribe does not practise female genital mutilation, he tells me. “This was a male ritual. And it was very public. I was invited to sit in the front row.” When he’s out with his crew, being bitten by ants, using stones for loo roll and sleeping on animal dung, does he ever wish he was back at home with a cup of coffee? “No! I mean, there are times that are hard. Sleeping conditions and food are generally the hardest challenges. But generally, I wake up each morning and pinch myself, thinking how lucky am I, Bruce Parry. I remind myself to remember this moment and never to forget how privileged I am to have the opportunity to share this experience.” He brings it home to you. It’s a good ride, although get ready to squirm.
Bruce Parry: 'Killing a goat for new Tribe was difficult – but taking the bus harms planet more'
Parry spoke with this week's issue of Radio Times magazine about his return to TV.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. There is vomiting, and then there is full-on, projectile expurgation. After the first episode of Bruce Parry’s new series, during which he is epically sick standing in a tributary of the Amazon river, I felt I knew the spew almost as much as the man. He didn’t even have a bug. Parry willingly drank a local concoction designed to detox the body in just this way. The likeable Parry, who first leapt onto our screens in a variety of skimpy loin cloths in the original Tribe two decades ago before quitting TV to make a feature film (Tawai: a Voice from the Forest), is back on our screens on the trail of radical tribal custom. It’s his first series since Arctic in 2011. Nothing, it seems, is too challenging. He’ll have his nose pierced with a bone, he’ll be sick in a river, he’ll sleep on a dung floor in a mud hut... Why go through it again? “Well, I am on a continuum,” says Parry, laughing. “I am still on this journey learning about how tribal people can offer some solutions to the world’s problems, and I wanted to share some of the things I have learnt. I feel very lucky they have allowed me back. So much of what indigenous people have to share actually feels more important now than it did the first time.” For the new BBC series, Parry is the first foreign visitor to live within the communities. Filming much of his experience with his own camera, he goes deep inside the Colombian rainforest to visit the Waimaha people, while the second episode sees him walking for a day to find the Mucubal, who live in the Namib desert, southern Angola, and the third follows him to a tropical island in Indonesia to stay with the Marapu. If you can manage the nasty details on top of all that vomiting (eating witchetty grubs, watching an 11-year-old child have her lower teeth knocked out without anaesthetic), you will learn a lot about people whose lifestyle is definitely different. Parry is an enthusiastic and winning guide, and willing to laugh at himself en route. No bodily function is out of bounds. “Right, off for the first dump of the trip,” he confides in us on day two of his Angolan adventure, heading off into the bush. “As for cleaning myself up afterwards…I have been told to use, er… a stone. So I will!” Classic Parry. Definitely out of his comfort zone but in such an engaging way that you, the viewer, are brought along, too. “You have to challenge yourself, otherwise you never do anything,” he says. I am so inspired by this that, after our Zoom call, I sign up to run the Valencia Marathon. Could I, however, suffocate a live goat? Parry can and does. On arrival in an Angolan village, he received the gift of a spotted, fluffy goat from the head of the tribe, from his herd of 150. “Thank you so much. What would you suggest I do with this goat?” he asks, politely. The response? “Kill it. You must kill it. Now.” He didn’t want to cause offence, plus it was on the next day’s menu. So, he had to do it. Without a knife, which does not keep the whole animal intact and is seen as disrespectful. “It was difficult, suffocating a goat. But I could be the most ethically minded person at home in the UK but still by simply getting on a bus, I will have a much larger impact on the planet than any one of these people. Who am I to judge them?” Parry is very keen not to act like the superior white man on a grand tour, and on the whole, he succeeds. “These children have never seen a white person before,” he says before saying hello to about five small Namibian children in a hut. Cue screams of horror from the children. “That’s quite a greeting,” he laughs. “I definitely have this effect on some people sometimes.” But quite soon into his three-week stay, he is considered part of the furniture, accepted by the Mucubal with amused interest. Vomiting with the Waimaha is definitely a Parry takeaway. The tribe see it as a perfectly normal cleansing ritual prior to a night of special festivities. The festival, which goes on until dawn, involves getting high on some natural herb, after which there is much shouting, dancing and throwing up. All night long. How different is this from a Saturday night in many British cities? “I think there is a difference: theirs is a ritual with a beginning and an end, and the young people are overseen by elders who have experience of such events.” How did he get on, taking the strong stuff but still having to interview people and talk to camera? “I feel a sense of trepidation, because you don’t quite know how your body is going to react. It’s pretty hardcore. But there is always something positive to be found. These people are much more aware of what they consume. They have an empathetic relationship with nature, with the forest.” He’d be brilliant on I’m a Celebrity, I say. Being showered by a zillion cockroaches would be a walk in the park for Parry. “I have been asked to be on all these reality shows with physical challenges. I have always turned them down.” In his quest to advocate for indigenous peoples, Parry sportingly allows himself to be bitten by ants in one show, while competing in a fist fight (where the aim is to draw blood) during another. But seeing others in pain is difficult. In the Angolan episode he is invited to observe a young girl willingly getting her lower teeth knocked out with a bloody stone (it is a sign of beauty), plus two young boys being circumcised. Here, the smile fades somewhat. “I struggled watching the young girl go through her ritual, but the male circumcision was definitely the hardest experience. Not only was I experiencing the pain of the boys, but also a deeper cultural pain. Why do we all, all of us, continue with certain practices, which don’t have a reason any more? It is a big part of why I am there. Why do we do certain things if they are so painful?” The tribe does not practise female genital mutilation, he tells me. “This was a male ritual. And it was very public. I was invited to sit in the front row.” When he’s out with his crew, being bitten by ants, using stones for loo roll and sleeping on animal dung, does he ever wish he was back at home with a cup of coffee? “No! I mean, there are times that are hard. Sleeping conditions and food are generally the hardest challenges. But generally, I wake up each morning and pinch myself, thinking how lucky am I, Bruce Parry. I remind myself to remember this moment and never to forget how privileged I am to have the opportunity to share this experience.” He brings it home to you. It’s a good ride, although get ready to squirm. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Tribe with Bruce Parry starts at 9pm on Sunday 30th March 2025 on BBC Two. Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Facing Stephen Graham in the ring isn’t for the faint-hearted, says Malachi Kirby
Add A Thousand Blows to your watchlist The arrival of Hezekiah Moscow, played by Bafta winner Malachi Kirby, is the catalyst for the action as A Thousand Blows begins. Hezekiah is a young man on the make, fresh off the boat from Jamaica and keen to earn his fortune in Victorian London. He has ambitions to become a lion tamer but soon becomes embroiled in the world of bare-knuckle fighting, run by the fearsome Henry “Sugar” Goodson (Stephen Graham). To play Hezekiah convincingly, Kirby learnt how to box. “It’s not just about throwing some punches,” he explains. “You’ve got to know how to read people. You’ve got to know how to get out of the way and survive.” Especially if your opponent is Stephen Graham? “He’s menacing! When you’re standing opposite him, he’s fully in the zone, and so you’re in the zone, too. Of course, we’re not planning to hit each other. But also, you know, it wouldn’t be the first time stuff’s gone wrong on a set, so we’ve gotta take care of each other.” For London-born Kirby, working on a period drama set in the capital had a familiar air. “It didn’t feel like a stretch for me to go back to that period. I don’t really know how much has changed with regards to how working-class Londoners go about life, even down to how we sound.” Countering the observation that actors now only spring from privilege, the 35-year-old tells me how he started. “I grew up in a council flat in Battersea. I’d go past mansions on the way to school, but I didn’t notice them. They didn’t exist. There was Battersea Park, there was the council flat I lived in and there was school.” Yet one thing he shares with his character in A Thousand Blows is the gift of limitless expectations. He’s always had it. “Hezekiah has this fierce ability to dream, and is not defined by the way he looks or his circumstances. It’s the way I feel.” What gave him that confidence? “It’s down to my mama. I grew up as an only child. My dad passed when I was six, so it was just me and my mum. I had a very close relationship with her. She raised me to believe anything was possible. Everyone assumes my mum probably didn’t take to the idea of me acting, but she was the reason I started. I was a very shy kid. She said, ‘This would be good for you. Give it a go.’” Following acclaimed turns in the 2016 remake of Roots and the Black Mirror episode Men against Fire, Kirby won a Bafta in 2021 for his role as Darcus Howe in the Mangrove instalment of Steve McQueen’s Little Axe anthology. He has much to thank his mother for. “My mum never got to choose where she lived. She wanted me to have that choice. She wanted me to grow up and be able to choose where I live. And I’ve been able to do that.” He pauses. “There is this passage in Scripture which says God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And even now, I’m confounded. I don’t know how I have got here. I didn’t have the fight that a lot of artists have had. Actually, it was the opposite. I was always trying to run away from the spotlight, but the opportunities kept presenting themselves and challenging me. And it was only about five years into doing it professionally that I went, ‘Oh, I think I can do this.’” Now he wants to pay it forward. “I would say to anyone that aspires to act, you have to dream and protect that dream. It may sometimes feel foolish, but that is part of my strength. That and my faith in God. That all helps me think that anything is possible. “It’s a numbers thing — you’re always going to have more auditions than your parts. And if you are doing great, you’ll get one out of ten auditions. That could feel like rejection, but I see it as redirection. It’s not that people didn’t like me. It’s not that I’m not good enough. It’s just that particular way wasn’t my journey. I’m supposed to be going somewhere else. And so you keep going.”
Erin Doherty would sooner be the Queen of Crime than a real-life royal
Add A Thousand Blows to your watchlist If Erin Doherty wanted to show off her versatility, she couldn’t have picked a better follow-up. From playing Princess Anne in The Crown to thieving Mary Carr in A Thousand Blows, she has gone from cut-glass to criminal class in a single stride. Carr earned her place in history as the daring helmswoman of a feared squad of female thieves in London’s docklands in the late 1800s known as the Forty Elephants, and Doherty is scathing about why their legacy is not better known. “I just can’t fathom that we haven’t told their stories up until now. If this was an all-male gang, would we know about them more? What these women did was genuinely impressive, not that I am glamorising criminal activity.” Compared to Princess Anne, the role of Carr presented Doherty with quite a different accent to master, to say the least. “Yeah, she’s straight down the line,” says the 32-year-old of her rough-hewn character. “She’s not a villain in any way. She was just doing what she had to do to survive.” Carr, like the Princess Royal, would often be found in trousers – only in Carr’s case, they were kitted out with giant pockets in order to hide her loot. She was certainly smart. “I thought of her like a snake, constantly in the reeds, low to the ground, sensing what other people are doing before she makes her move,” says Doherty. It’s surely no coincidence that Carr and her all-female gang have been brought to light by Steven Knight, whose previous dramatic engagement with the criminal underclass gave us Peaky Blinders. A Thousand Blows is not, however, Blinders in skirts. “It’s a tribute to Steven’s brilliant writing that he never puts Mary, or any of the women in her gang, in a ‘female’ pigeonhole,” says Doherty. “He never sees them as anything other than ordinary, decent criminals. Their gender is secondary, and that’s so refreshing.” Carr says at one point: “I’m beyond men.” “It’s like Mary is saying, ‘Let’s all forget about our genders or what’s in between our legs, it doesn’t matter,’” says Doherty. “What do you need to do in order to survive? What do you need to do to be the best you can be? Go and do that. That’s what matters. “That’s what’s so amazing about this drama. We are still fighting for female roles that don’t centre around a romantic relationship of any kind. It’s really rare to be given a character to play who isn’t talking about a significant other. And that’s not necessarily always a man. As a gay woman, I would also count playing a woman who’s in relationships with other women. There’s more to life than relationships.” Doherty frequently laughs during our interview. She appears to be revelling in bringing this tough, remarkable woman to life in a big, splashy period drama that combines East End trickery, bare-knuckle fighting and the odd chase in a horse-drawn carriage. What’s more, Mary Carr has agency. She might sport Dickensian-style bonnets and skirts, but she’s no doomed Nancy, and she’s certainly no Miss Havisham. Even though she has already achieved enormous critical acclaim, Doherty’s life could have gone another way entirely. Indeed, she was once scouted by Chelsea for a potential career as a professional footballer. Given the recent success of the Lionesses, it’s just as well the acting lark paid off, I tell her. “I know!” she snorts. “But I loved acting so much, I just didn’t have the heart to entertain the notion of failure. I think the fact that I just didn’t even think about doing anything else eventually paid off. My dad kept saying I should probably go to university, as a backup, and I was like, I don’t want to have a ‘backup’.” School in her home town of Crawley in West Sussex wasn’t a good place. “I hated it. I lived for the weekends, because that was when I got to go to drama club. I just lived in my little bubble, waiting to perform. I always knew I was going to try for acting, and school never felt connected to it in any way.” She giggles again. “I was quite bad. I got kicked off my English Literature course because I didn’t read the books. Not that I’m promoting bunking off. It’s just that I had found a thing which gave me so much joy and fulfilment. I didn’t want to think about anything else.” So, which will it be: the neglected streets in Mary Carr’s life, or the indulged world of Princess Anne? “Well, my overarching feeling when I was playing Princess Anne was that these people felt so lonely. Whereas with this show, and these people, they are so intertwined. And in a way, there’s a beauty in the camaraderie. Whereas up there, with the Royals, you are on your own, even within your own family, which is so sad. Honestly, I wouldn’t think twice about it. The East End, one hundred per cent.”
As Michael Mosley’s final TV project receives a posthumous airing, his friend and longtime colleague Andrew Cohen pays tribute to the broadcaster
Add Michael Mosley: Just One Thing to your watchlist The tragedy of Dr Michael Mosley’s untimely death on the Greek island of Symi earlier this year is nowhere better demonstrated than by what the host of the wildly successful Radio 4 series and podcast Just One Thing with Michael Mosley left unfinished. Mosley was in the midst of shooting a ten-part series of the same name for television when he went on that fateful holiday with his wife, Dr Clare Bailey. Only two episodes were completed before his death in June, aged 67. Yet while they will be seen as a cruelly truncated project, they are also a tribute to the pioneering doctor and journalist whose favoured way of explaining science was to immerse himself in the science. So what are the final two “just one things” the good doctor was keen for us to try? The first is to have a cold shower for 30 seconds every morning; the second is to take up a new skill – music, a language, or pottery, for example. Naturally, Mosley himself takes his own medicine and one of the joys of the first programme is watching him shiver under a cold shower and sit in a tub of iced water in order to show how cold water immersion can help calm inflammation and boost our immune systems, mood and brain power. Andrew Cohen, head of BBC Studios’ Science Unit, which produced the show, says immersion in the science was Mosley’s great idea. “One of his earliest programmes as a producer was about a scientist who proved himself that bacterial infection could cause stomach ulcers. The concept of self-experimentation lodged in Michael’s brain and he later did a show where he infected himself with a tapeworm. It broke down the barriers and took away from the notion of a doctor telling patients what to do.” Of course, Mosley would later get us all onto the 5:2 diet, taking up intermittent fasting just as he had. And in these final episodes of Just One Thing, he is still encouraging members of the public to do as he does – in this case, prescribing cold showers to a stressed-out mother of two in north Wales, who brings along some friends for the chilly experience. Watching Mosley gently guide the reluctant women, who go from hesitatingly standing underneath a cold shower at the beach to leaping into a Welsh lake and hanging out in there hugging one another, is a moving tribute to his can-do spirit of healthcare. It’s also an extremely strange experience to see the TV doctor who became our friend chatting, talking and laughing with his guests. He seems so well, so hearty and healthy, just weeks before his death. “Michael had an extraordinary ability to pull the hurdles away, to help people feel that they could change their lives,” says Cohen, who knew Mosley for 30 years and had firsthand experience not only of Mosley’s brio and energy, but also his medical skills. According to Cohen, in 2006 Mosley saved the life of a colleague who collapsed at work, performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on her until an ambulance arrived. For Mosley, putting Just One Thing on TV had always been an ambition, adds Cohen, whose other collaborations with the presenter included Inside the Human Body, Trust Me, I’m a Doctor and Horizon. “As the success of the podcast increased, it was in our minds. The audio format of the show was so simple, so to keep that simplicity on the TV version was something we thought about long and hard.” There is, he adds, zero chance that the remaining eight episodes will be completed: “We are not thinking about that.” Mosley had not narrated the films before his death. Instead, Sara Cox provides the voiceover, telling viewers that he “touched and changed many of our lives”. These episodes, says Cohen, “are a chance for us to celebrate Michael’s legacy, and remember the man he was.”
Lucy Worsley is fascinated by historic female criminals
Lady Swindlers with Lucy Worsley is on Radio 4 on Monday 30 September at 3.30pm. Add it to your collection. Your new radio series, Lady Swindlers, is a follow-up to your Lady Killers series — have you ever done anything illicit yourself? If you’re asking whether I have a criminal record, then the answer is no! But I did once steal an easel from London’s Somerset House. We were filming a pair of paintings there and we needed two easels, but we only had one. I had seen some in the restaurant, so I went and “borrowed” one. The next thing I know, the security guard’s radio crackled and a voice said, “A blonde woman has just stolen an easel from the restaurant, do you know where she is?” I have never done anything like that ever again! And yes, I returned it. You’re best known for your TV work; why did you choose to make this for radio? We are able to cover stories which would never get made on TV because they’re not mainstream. This isn’t about kings and queens, it’s about individual women who nobody has ever heard about. Each episode deals with an extraordinary woman — from 1920s shoplifter Alice Diamond to Mary Baker, who, in 1817, pretended to be the fictional Princess Caraboo from a far-off island kingdom… My Lady Swindlers all do something that they aren’t expected to do. All swindlers operate with stereotypes – you expect one thing, you get another. Perhaps there’s a thing about looking meek and unthreatening that women use to their advantage. One of our subjects is Madame Rachel. Part of the reason she was pilloried was not so much about her crimes, but her transgression of succeeding in the male world of business. Why was having an all-female team on the series so important to you? In “true crime” shows, often the woman is either dead, or running through woods, naked, with a killer on her trail. We thought it would be fun to fip that and have women experts doing the talking. Our in-house historian is Professor Rosalind Crone of the Open University, who knows everything about prisons. We then have Professor Lorraine Gamman of Central Saint Martin’s, who is founder of the Design Against Crime Research Lab, which helps protect shops against shoplifting, for example. She is so fabulous! She freely admits her father was a thief. Speaking to her makes me realise I live in a middle-class bubble and there are areas of the world I don’t know. You also had an all-female team for Lady Killers. Has this been commented on? Absolutely, yes. One complaint we got was from someone who wrote in and said, “Where is the balance? All these experts are female! What’s gone wrong?” From a genuine person! What was your response? What’s gone wrong is centuries of patriarchy! I own the fact that we use women who are in bad places as a way in, but we do this with a particularly female gaze and tell these stories as feminists. It gives us confidence to look for details and attitudes, which can help us learn to live our own lives better today. One of the prevalent attitudes today is that somehow, we are better than people of the past. Actually, the answer is that no, we are not. Do we look at female criminals using a different moral scale? Yes, I think we possibly do – and possibly should. You can’t always condone what these criminals did, but you can see why they did it. Given that they are living in a world which is made by and for men, they come from a position of the underdog. Do you think women ought to be given custodial sentences? I’d say the consensus of experts is that putting a woman into prison for a short sentence is very damaging. And that any punishment is dwarfed by the damage done to her children, to her job, to her accommodation, to the wider community.
Joan Hannington was one of the UK’s most notorious jewel thieves. Anna Symon brings her powerful story to the screen and describes meeting her
Add Joan to your watchlist Ah, the glamorous 1980s. Shoulder pads, high heels, big hair, Madonna, Princess Diana. A time of opportunity, if you were a woman who wanted to make it – and Joan Hannington knew all about opportunity. Stealing cars, faking passports, swallowing loose diamonds to sell on the black market, in and out of prison; nothing, it seems, was off limits for Joan Hannington. Now in her late 60s, she lives quietly on the English south coast with her dogs, but her considerably unquiet story has been turned into a beguiling six-part series for ITV, starring Sophie Turner. Writer Anna Symon was given the task of transforming Hannington’s memoir, I Am What I Am: The True Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief, for the screen. “I was so intrigued by her as a character,” says Symon. “Strong, fierce, but a vulnerable woman with a terrible back story that scarred her deeply. She was very glamorous and beautiful, and used her feminine wiles, shall we say, to achieve her crimes.” This once-dangerous woman needed to agree to Symon’s script. “I met her in a café in north London,” explains the writer, who also adapted The Essex Serpent starring Tom Hiddleston and actor Ruth Wilson’s real-life family drama, Mrs Wilson. View oEmbed on the source website “It was terrifying. Although she was charming, it was clear she knew how to look after herself. You knew she was someone not to mess with. And she said, quite clearly, ‘I don’t want you to tell my story unless you include what I went through as a child.’ She was very severely beaten by her father. Amid all the glamour of fur coats and diamonds, there was this vulnerable person underneath.” Hannington gave Symon a unique chance to re-create London’s dangerous, gangland world of fake identities and stolen jewels – but with a woman, for once, at the helm. Quite a different proposition. “We hold female characters on TV to a higher standard; we have to decide whether we root for Joan, in a way that I don’t think would be asked of a male character,” observes Symon. “We have never seen the inside story of a female criminal unless it’s Myra Hindley or an invention, like Villanelle in Killing Eve. Joan grew up with nothing and was constantly let down by men. At the same time, she didn’t want to be seen as a victim.” Indeed, from the first episode, when we see Hannington speeding down the motorway in a stolen Triumph TR7, this is clearly a woman with agency. “She took responsibility. She got a buzz from being good at stealing,” explains Symon. “As she says, ‘Stealing diamonds was my crack cocaine.’ ” Did Symon ever worry that the series, with what Hannington describes as the “victimless” offence of stealing jewels, might glamorise crime? “Of course, we talked about this during the process. We’re not inviting mimics because things have changed, you can’t switch rings in jewellery shops now. Shoplifting was a lot easier then. No cameras in stores, no mobile phones. It was an easier time to be a thief. “I also think as viewers carry on with the series and see how the story develops, it becomes less glamorous. Reality catches up with Joan. It doesn’t encourage people to go down a criminal path.” Although, Symon admits, there is an unavoidable shimmer to the world in which Joan Hannington thrived. “The glamour was an attraction for her. She loved having lovely clothes and wearing jewels.” Sophie Turner is easily as glamorous as Hannington was, but plays the role with sensitivity under the lashings of make-up. You believe that Hannington loves her daughter Kelly; you believe that she wants a better life for her child. “Sophie is extraordinary,” says Symon of her leading lady, who got her first television role at the age of 14, when she was cast as Game of Thrones’ Sansa Stark. For the past few years Turner has rarely been out of the papers, thanks to a messy divorce and custody wrangle for her two small children with singer Joe Jonas. “When I wrote the series, we didn’t have anyone in mind,” Symon continues. “She sent us a self-recorded tape; when the director and I saw it, it blew our socks off! We were so confident in her right from the start.” As, it seems, was Hannington herself. “They [Hannington and Turner] met before we started filming,” says Symon. “Joan then came on set and she’s now watched all the episodes. She sobbed through quite a lot of it. But she’s proud. I felt a real responsibility to ensure she was truthfully represented.”
Kevin McCloud has been monitoring self-builds on Grand Designs for a quarter of a century — but are they now in danger of becoming too grand?
Add Grand Designs: 25 Years and Counting to your watchlist It’s well known that moving house is one of the most stressful things a human being can do. Building your own from scratch, however, is stress on another level. Welcome to the world of Grand Designs, which has now been on our TV screens for an astonishing 25 years. Possibly the only comforting thought for the people behind the projects – who remain remarkably naive, considering – is that the show is synonymous with its presenter Kevin McCloud. After a quarter of a century he now seems like an all-seeing saint of bricks and mortar – firm but fair, a calm, hard-hatted presence amid the rubble. In a world where mere makeover Johnnies have come and gone, Grand Designs has had an almost impossible duration on peak-time TV. Can McCloud quite believe it? “Well, it’s interesting how long it’s survived,” he says with impressive modesty. When it started, the show was an anomaly. “Back in the 1990s, the culture of TV was for half-hour makeover shows, which I felt were rather exploitative. These were shows in which you didn’t know the outcome and neither did the contestants.” Grand Designs was always a much gentler beast, possibly because the task was actually rather difficult and the stakes were so high. This wasn’t about using a staple gun to change the headboard in your bedroom; this was about reinforced steel joists and brick walls. “We got berated for making celebratory TV that didn’t exploit the contributors. But we were filming the real world. People build what they want to build. We were celebrating good buildings, not mediocre ones, and that was counter to the times.” Where was he for the first show? “I remember it well. We were on a field by the cliffs above Peacehaven in East Sussex, and a young couple were building their house. We started filming it 27 years ago and because it was episode one, we didn’t really know what we were doing. Do you know, I went back this year, and the same couple are still in the same house.” McCloud admits he has matured since then. “I used to wave my arms around a huge amount. The directors would say, ‘We need more energy!’ and I would amp everything up a huge amount, I was very enthusiastic. And I would write down everything I said beforehand. I soon learnt that the best thing is not to write a script, but just to talk naturally.” He thinks the secret is that Grand Designs doesn’t follow a prescribed format. “Its longevity results from proper storytelling and traditional film-making values. There isn’t a format and we don’t know the outcomes. We don’t invent pretend danger. If there’s a struggle, it’s just that. It’s not a ‘desperate uphill struggle’. And we don’t speak of ‘jeopardy’.” There clearly is jeopardy, though, whether from dream projects taking too long, costing too much or, in one particularly awful situation, wrecking a marriage. What does McCloud fear most at the start of each shiny, happy project? “My biggest bugbear is things being too big,” he says. “Most houses could shrink overnight by a third, and the occupants would never notice. Number two? Houses with more toilets than physical occupants. Why do people judge the status of a house by how many toilets you can offer your guests? It’s absurd. Thirdly, complexity. Most people say to me that if they had known how complicated building is, they would have made their idea simpler. Complexity has become a demonstration of the need to be grand.” Well, it’s in the title. “No, it’s not!” McCloud insists. “The word ‘grand’ in the title refers to the power of the human imagination. It doesn’t refer to the budget! We’re always looking for the smaller projects.” His own house isn’t all that grand, if by “grand” you mean lavish. “Our homes ought to be autobiographical, full of people’s histories and the stuff of life. You can have great design from a recycled thing, a cheap thing or a borrowed thing.” Thus speaks the man who has, yes, an Ikea kitchen. “Yes, in a way it is an Ikea kitchen. I have Ikea cupboards and drawers, the work surfaces are by Cosentino and the taps are posh. And the kitchen table is an original Eero Saarinen 1960s Tulip table. That is the point. I am a fan of Ikea, the democracy of good design and also of properly sustainable furniture, and I like doing stuff myself.” Fronting a peak-time TV show at the age of 65, McCloud is something of an outlier. He says he wants to go on for the next 25 years, and end up like David Attenborough, although he is aware that the world of storytelling and communications is radically different from how it was when he began in 1999. “Social media, in its short-form nature, is very good at the snapshot. Instagram or TikTok can entice someone with an idea.” A snort. “I don’t do anything like this. I take between 12 to 14 years to make one hour of television.” What about the rest of the gig? “Fame? Fame is part of the job. When people stop recognising me, I know I won’t have any more work,” he says. “I remember talking to Roger Cook, the great current affairs presenter. He told me one day he was walking down a street somewhere and a passer-by said, ‘Hey! Didn’t you used to be Roger Cook?’ That sums it up. You are there in the moment and only exist if someone has seen your TV show.” Not that he especially enjoys it. Dear reader, if you come across Kevin McCloud in his wellies, do by all means speak to him in Italian (he used to live in Italy), but do not ask him for a selfie. “It’s the sense of entitlement that people have over your privacy,” he says, dolefully. “That you are public property and therefore I have to do a selfie with you. You have to supply a resource for someone else. And in that moment you feel dehumanised. Actually [more cheerfully], young people have started asking for autographs. I think what one might call the ‘selfie generation’ has started to shrink.” Maybe one of the reasons he, and the show, has lasted so long is that rather like Attenborough or, say, Monty Don, McCloud isn’t a general presenter. Rather, he has one message, and he has stuck with it. “I am interested in design and the process by which humans make lives better,” he explains. “As I get older, I am interested in design for accessibility – my knees are getting a bit creaky and anything that makes my life easier can be helpful. “These demanding areas of design are usually dealt with clunkily, eg by the NHS. People have more refined solutions at home.” One of the episodes in the new series of Grand Designs reveals a house designed for a woman who is in a wheelchair and her young family. “Visiting the house of someone in a wheelchair and thinking about how life works for them is always going to be more satisfying and intriguing.” One has to acknowledge the foresight of the original Channel 4 commissioner who first gave the series the green light, and the faith this displayed that something recorded many months, even years, before could be broadcast. Grand Designs is as much about people measuring an open field as it is about the grand reveal, as well as all the rest, says McCloud. “Architecture is an experiential phenomenon, an expression of who we are as people and as a species, and who we are in place and time.”
Grand Designs' Kevin McCloud wants to endure like David Attenborough
The Channel 4 series will be marking 25 years on air later this month.
This interview was originally published in Radio Times magazine. It's well known that moving house is one of the most stressful things a human being can do. Building your own from scratch, however, is stress on another level. Welcome to the world of Grand Designs, which has now been on our TV screens for an astonishing 25 years. Possibly the only comforting thought for the people behind the projects – who remain remarkably naive, considering – is that the show is synonymous with its presenter Kevin McCloud. After a quarter of a century, he now seems like an all-seeing saint of bricks and mortar – firm but fair, a calm, hard-hatted presence amid the rubble. In a world where mere makeover Johnnies have come and gone, Grand Designs has had an almost impossible duration on peak-time TV. Can McCloud quite believe it? "Well, it's interesting how long it's survived," he says with impressive modesty. When it started, the show was an anomaly. "Back in the 1990s, the culture of TV was for half-hour makeover shows, which I felt were rather exploitative. These were shows in which you didn’t know the outcome and neither did the contestants." Grand Designs was always a much gentler beast, possibly because the task was actually rather difficult and the stakes were so high. This wasn't about using a staple gun to change the headboard in your bedroom; this was about reinforced steel joists and brick walls. "We got berated for making celebratory TV that didn't exploit the contributors. But we were filming the real world. People build what they want to build. We were celebrating good buildings, not mediocre ones, and that was counter to the times." Where was he for the first show? "I remember it well. We were on a field by the cliffs above Peacehaven in East Sussex, and a young couple were building their house. We started filming it 27 years ago, and because it was episode 1, we didn’t really know what we were doing. Do you know, I went back this year, and the same couple are still in the same house." McCloud admits he has matured since then. "I used to wave my arms around a huge amount. The directors would say, 'We need more energy!' and I would amp everything up a huge amount, I was very enthusiastic. And I would write down everything I said beforehand. I soon learnt that the best thing is not to write a script, but just to talk naturally." He thinks the secret is that Grand Designs doesn't follow a prescribed format. "Its longevity results from proper storytelling and traditional film-making values. There isn't a format and we don’t know the outcomes. We don't invent pretend danger. If there's a struggle, it's just that. It's not a 'desperate uphill struggle'. And we don't speak of 'jeopardy'." There clearly is jeopardy, though, whether from dream projects taking too long, costing too much or, in one particularly awful situation, wrecking a marriage. What does McCloud fear most at the start of each shiny, happy project? "My biggest bugbear is things being too big," he says. "Most houses could shrink overnight by a third, and the occupants would never notice. Number two? Houses with more toilets than physical occupants. Why do people judge the status of a house by how many toilets you can offer your guests? It's absurd. Thirdly, complexity. Most people say to me that if they had known how complicated building is, they would have made their idea simpler. Complexity has become a demonstration of the need to be grand." Well, it's in the title. "No, it's not!" McCloud insists. "The word 'grand' in the title refers to the power of the human imagination. It doesn't refer to the budget! We're always looking for the smaller projects." His own house isn't all that grand, if by "grand" you mean lavish. "Our homes ought to be autobiographical, full of people's histories and the stuff of life. You can have great design from a recycled thing, a cheap thing or a borrowed thing." Thus speaks the man who has, yes, an Ikea kitchen. "Yes, in a way it is an Ikea kitchen. I have Ikea cupboards and drawers, the work surfaces are by Cosentino and the taps are posh. And the kitchen table is an original Eero Saarinen 1960s Tulip table. That is the point. I am a fan of Ikea, the democracy of good design and also of properly sustainable furniture, and I like doing stuff myself." Fronting a peak-time TV show at the age of 65, McCloud is something of an outlier. He says he wants to go on for the next 25 years, and end up like David Attenborough, although he is aware that the world of storytelling and communications is radically different from how it was when he began in 1999. "Social media, in its short-form nature, is very good at the snapshot. Instagram or TikTok can entice someone with an idea." A snort. "I don't do anything like this. I take between 12 to 14 years to make one hour of television." What about the rest of the gig? "Fame? Fame is part of the job. When people stop recognising me, I know I won’t have any more work," he says. "I remember talking to Roger Cook, the great current affairs presenter. He told me one day he was walking down a street somewhere and a passer-by said, 'Hey! Didn't you used to be Roger Cook?' That sums it up. You are there in the moment and only exist if someone has seen your TV show." Not that he especially enjoys it. Dear reader, if you come across Kevin McCloud in his wellies, do by all means speak to him in Italian (he used to live in Italy), but do not ask him for a selfie. "It's the sense of entitlement that people have over your privacy," he says, dolefully. "That you are public property and therefore I have to do a selfie with you. You have to supply a resource for someone else. And in that moment you feel dehumanised. Actually [more cheerfully], young people have started asking for autographs. I think what one might call the 'selfie generation' has started to shrink." Maybe one of the reasons he, and the show, has lasted so long is that, rather like Attenborough or, say, Monty Don, McCloud isn't a general presenter. Rather, he has one message, and he has stuck with it. "I am interested in design and the process by which humans make lives better," he explains. "As I get older, I am interested in design for accessibility – my knees are getting a bit creaky and anything that makes my life easier can be helpful. "These demanding areas of design are usually dealt with clunkily, eg by the NHS. People have more refined solutions at home." One of the episodes in the new season of Grand Designs reveals a house designed for a woman who is in a wheelchair and her young family. "Visiting the house of someone in a wheelchair and thinking about how life works for them is always going to be more satisfying and intriguing." One has to acknowledge the foresight of the original Channel 4 commissioner who first gave the series the green light, and the faith this displayed that something recorded many months, even years, before could be broadcast. Grand Designs is as much about people measuring an open field as it is about the grand reveal, as well as all the rest, says McCloud. "Architecture is an experiential phenomenon, an expression of who we are as people and as a species, and who we are in place and time." Grand Designs airs on Channel 4. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Dame Sarah Storey is already Britain’s most decorated Paralympian. Now she’s about to make history by competing at her ninth Games
A s preparations go, it was hardly ideal. On a Sunday morning three weeks before the Olympics, Paralympian superstar Dame Sarah Storey was taking part in a charity ride on a country lane in Sussex. “There was a very impatient driver in a fast car behind us, and he wanted to teach us a lesson,” she remembers. “So he beeps his horn and shoots past us unnecessarily fast. He was too close, if something had been coming the other way, he would have caused a collision.” Did he have any idea who he was harassing? Possibly. “I was in my World Championships kit…” A collision with Storey and the others in her group – all fellow members of British Cycling – doesn’t bear thinking about. Weeks later, 46-year-old Storey is en route to her ninth summer Paralympics. No British athlete has ever competed in nine consecutive Games; her total of 28 Paralympic medals, including 17 golds, already makes her the most decorated British Paralympian of all time. And so Storey will approach the Paris circuit in the same manner she approached the road race at the Tokyo Games in 2021 when she won her 17th gold in spectacular fashion. Pelting rain meant the 66km circuit was near-impossible to read. But, having memorised it, Storey knew how to ride it, even with her eyes closed. On the final lap everyone else was nervously slowing down on a hill that had a corner with an overhanging tree. She took the descent at 80kmph and simply ducked the branches. Class. “I’ll be taking what I’ve been doing in the last 33 years to the start line,” she says. Does she visualise winning? “Absolutely not. One of the things that used to make us teenagers giggle was being told to lie down, listen to whale music and visualise ourselves winning. It’s unhelpful. What you have to do is visualise the process of winning, or the process of completing a race that you might win. Everybody is going for the same thing. All you can control is your process, like pieces in a jigsaw, one after the other.” We’re talking in Manchester’s National Cycling Centre, overlooking the giant velodrome. But the arena isn’t where Storey enjoys world dominance. Her stadium is the roads outside, in the rain and gravel, a place where it really hurts if you fall of. She can currently be seen falling of her bike in Channel 4’s trailer for the Paralympics, which goes to some lengths to show that Paralympians are not “superhuman”, but real people as afected as anyone by a bike spinning out of control. “We are no more superhuman than anyone,” she says. “Friction on a rider is the same in the Paralympics as it is in the Tour de France.” Storey, who was born without a functioning left hand after her arm became entangled in the umbilical cord, says that the perception of disability has changed during her career. “The focus up until now has been on the prosthetic, or the part of the body that’s missing,” she says. “It’s another iteration of being ‘brave and courageous’. But you are now recognised by a much broader number of people as being a great athlete. I would like to see that replicated for other people. So you’re not patronising people with disabilities, you are placing something there to enable them to live their best life.” So dominant is Storey in her discipline that it is sobering to remember that her Paralympic journey began in the pool. She competed in the 1992 Barcelona Games, aged 14, and came home with two golds, three silvers and a bronze. She gained a further three golds, five silvers and two bronzes at the next three Paralympics in Atlanta, Sydney and Athens. One might have thought that after Athens she would have then retired, job done, but no. An ear infection kept her out of the pool for months, so Storey tried out on a bike, just to keep fit. By the time the infection had subsided, she had broken a world record on the bike, and Beijing was on the horizon. UK Sport couldn’t fund her in both disciplines, so a choice lay before her. “London had just landed the Games. My coach said, ‘The gains you can make now in the pool are relatively small, but you are going places on that bike. If you were my daughter, I would tell you to try something new.’ We were three years out from Beijing, and seven years out from London. So there was time. They were some of the wisest words I had ever heard.” Her mental capacity in the pool made a huge impact on her proficiency as a cyclist. She had spent hours revising GCSEs in her head while swimming lengths, envisaging lists of French verbs or maths equations and simply replaying them in her mind. Storey had developed almost perfect visual recall. So, with a road race, she could prepare by visually memorising the exact route, with all its quirks and challenges. “It’s like having an instant map in my head. I can see where the extra power is needed, where the technical sections are, where there will be a chance for a breather and where I need to concentrate on the finishing line.” Her years as a swimmer were not easy. At school in Cheshire, the golden girl was not someone to be admired, but someone to be picked on, and Storey developed an eating disorder. “People would just stop talking when I walked into a classroom,” she says. “After Barcelona, my life was not normal for a child doing GCSEs; 20 per cent of my lessons I did at home. I would arrive at school with wet hair from morning training, then leave immediately after the school day, for evening training. All of that meant I was quite difficult to identify with, so people started making things up.” She remembers feeling “quite isolated”. “It taught me a lesson, really early, that it’s OK if not everybody likes you. I just had to block out those people and protect the people who did like me. I think it’s helped me throughout my career. To recognise when people are toxic, sidestep them and carry on with my path, without there needing to be a big showdown.” When Storey returns to school now with her medals in tow, she gets a very different reception. “I take them to schools, but it’s the reaction of the grown-ups. Some people just start crying. The younger children don’t really understand what they are holding. They want to throw them around. But the adults… Sometimes you’ll be speaking at a conference or a workshop where you’ve got a small group of people and then I’ll simply put them in the middle of the room while we are chatting and let people have a look. They feel their weight and they are just overwhelmed. They are in tears.” Storey’s 17th medal ceremony, in an almost empty Tokyo stadium due to the pandemic, was particularly poignant. “I remember thinking, ‘I have to take this in,’ because it was so unique, and bizarre. The medal ceremony always feels like it comes so soon after the race, which is great because it’s all you want, if you’ve won it. But it all happens so fast, you are still inwardly celebrating, and feeling relieved because you have built up towards that moment for so long.” After the absence of crowds or family in Tokyo, Paris will be very different. She is particularly excited because her children, Louisa, 11, and six-year-old Charlie, will be there with her husband Barney, who is also a multiple Paralympic medallist, having been a sighted pilot for blind or partially sighted cyclists in tandem track events. “It’s next level, being able to share in their excitement and see it through their eyes. It’s incredibly helpful to me as a mother. You think about the hours you sat up at night feeding them, and all the things that you did to nurture them the best way you can. And then they get to see you in the glare of performance, that sort of raw situation where nothing else matters.” Medal after medal, Storey is testament to the simple adage that preparation is all. “If you want to be successful, you have to focus 100 per cent on the task in hand and have a strategy all the way through. The strategy helps the nerves because you know what you’re going to do.” As we talk, the Paralympic emblem is emblazoned on the Arc de Triomphe, but Storey is confident Paris will pick up London’s baton in more than just branding. “Paris has seen what happened with London, how the Olympics and Paralympics co-existed. They want to make sure the Paralympics has a legacy.” Ideally, it will prove to be even better. “We started a conversation in London, but it didn’t impact daily life for people with disabilities. Athletes with disabilities are provided with training opportunities and the chance to be elite. But in day-to-day life, we add hurdles to people with disabilities, because we forget to think about them. We failed to translate the gains. The London Paralympics might have been inspiring, but it didn’t change the fact that disabled people are still left on trains because there are no ramps, or that charging cables for electric cars mean trip hazards, or that people leave Lime bikes lying on the pavement, or that roads lack curbs at the right height for a visually impaired person. All of that matters.” Now is the time, she urges. “We have to change things, piece by piece. Paris has the chance now to really move the dial.”
Sarah Storey on competing in her record-breaking ninth Paralympics
"We have to change things piece by piece. Paris has the chance now to really move the dial."
This interview was originally published in Radio Times magazine. As preparations go, it was hardly ideal. On a Sunday morning three weeks before the Olympics, Paralympian superstar Dame Sarah Storey was taking part in a charity ride on a country lane in Sussex. "There was a very impatient driver in a fast car behind us, and he wanted to teach us a lesson," she remembers. "So, he beeps his horn and shoots past us unnecessarily fast. He was too close - if something had been coming the other way, he would have caused a collision." Did he have any idea who he was harassing? Possibly. "I was in my World Championships kit…" A collision with Storey and the others in her group – all fellow members of British Cycling – doesn’t bear thinking about. Weeks later, 46-year-old Storey is en route to her ninth summer Paralympics. No British athlete has ever competed in nine consecutive Games; her total of 28 Paralympic medals, including 17 golds, already makes her the most decorated British Paralympian of all time. And so Storey will approach the Paris circuit in the same manner she approached the road race at the Tokyo Games in 2021, when she won her 17th gold in spectacular fashion. Pelting rain meant the 66km circuit was near-impossible to read. But, having memorised it, Storey knew how to ride it, even with her eyes closed. On the final lap, everyone else was nervously slowing down on a hill that had a corner with an overhanging tree. She took the descent at 80kmph and simply ducked the branches. Class. "I’ll be taking what I’ve been doing in the last 33 years to the start line," she says. Does she visualise winning? "Absolutely not. One of the things that used to make us teenagers giggle was being told to lie down, listen to whale music and visualise ourselves winning. It’s unhelpful. "What you have to do is visualise the process of winning, or the process of completing a race that you might win. Everybody is going for the same thing. All you can control is your process, like pieces in a jigsaw, one after the other." We’re talking in Manchester’s National Cycling Centre, overlooking the giant velodrome. But the arena isn’t where Storey enjoys world dominance. Her stadium is the roads outside, in the rain and gravel, a place where it really hurts if you fall off. She can currently be seen falling off her bike in Channel 4’s trailer for the Paralympics, which goes to some lengths to show that Paralympians are not "superhuman", but real people as affected as anyone by a bike spinning out of control. "We are no more superhuman than anyone," she says. "Friction on a rider is the same in the Paralympics as it is in the Tour de France." Storey, who was born without a functioning left hand after her arm became entangled in the umbilical cord, says that the perception of disability has changed during her career. "The focus up until now has been on the prosthetic, or the part of the body that’s missing," she says. "It’s another iteration of being 'brave and courageous'. "But you are now recognised by a much broader number of people as being a great athlete. I would like to see that replicated for other people. So you’re not patronising people with disabilities, you are placing something there to enable them to live their best life." Check out our Paralympics 2024 TV guide, including where to watch the action, exclusive interviews, and a day-by-day TV planner. So dominant is Storey in her discipline that it is sobering to remember that her Paralympic journey began in the pool. She competed in the 1992 Barcelona Games, aged 14, and came home with two golds, three silvers and a bronze. She gained a further three golds, five silvers and two bronzes at the next three Paralympics in Atlanta, Sydney and Athens. One might have thought that after Athens she would have then retired, job done, but no. An ear infection kept her out of the pool for months, so Storey tried out on a bike, just to keep fit. By the time the infection had subsided, she had broken a world record on the bike, and Beijing was on the horizon. UK Sport couldn’t fund her in both disciplines, so a choice lay before her. "London had just landed the Games. My coach said, 'The gains you can make now in the pool are relatively small, but you are going places on that bike. If you were my daughter, I would tell you to try something new.' "We were three years out from Beijing, and seven years out from London. So there was time. They were some of the wisest words I had ever heard." Her mental capacity in the pool made a huge impact on her proficiency as a cyclist. She had spent hours revising GCSEs in her head while swimming lengths, envisaging lists of French verbs or maths equations and simply replaying them in her mind. Storey had developed almost perfect visual recall. So, with a road race, she could prepare by visually memorising the exact route, with all its quirks and challenges. "It’s like having an instant map in my head. I can see where the extra power is needed, where the technical sections are, where there will be a chance for a breather and where I need to concentrate on the finishing line." Her years as a swimmer were not easy. At school in Cheshire, the golden girl was not someone to be admired, but someone to be picked on, and Storey developed an eating disorder. "People would just stop talking when I walked into a classroom," she says. "After Barcelona, my life was not normal for a child doing GCSEs; 20 per cent of my lessons I did at home. I would arrive at school with wet hair from morning training, then leave immediately after the school day, for evening training. All of that meant I was quite difficult to identify with, so people started making things up." She remembers feeling "quite isolated". "It taught me a lesson, really early, that it’s OK if not everybody likes you. I just had to block out those people and protect the people who did like me. I think it’s helped me throughout my career. To recognise when people are toxic, sidestep them and carry on with my path, without there needing to be a big showdown." When Storey returns to school now with her medals in tow, she gets a very different reception. "I take them to schools, but it’s the reaction of the grown-ups. Some people just start crying. The younger children don’t really understand what they are holding. They want to throw them around. But the adults… Sometimes you’ll be speaking at a conference or a workshop where you’ve got a small group of people and then I’ll simply put them in the middle of the room while we are chatting and let people have a look. They feel their weight and they are just overwhelmed. They are in tears." Storey’s 17th medal ceremony, in an almost empty Tokyo stadium due to the pandemic, was particularly poignant. "I remember thinking, 'I have to take this in,' because it was so unique, and bizarre. The medal ceremony always feels like it comes so soon after the race, which is great because it’s all you want, if you’ve won it. But it all happens so fast, you are still inwardly celebrating, and feeling relieved because you have built up towards that moment for so long." After the absence of crowds or family in Tokyo, Paris will be very different. She is particularly excited because her children, Louisa, 11, and six-year-old Charlie, will be there with her husband Barney, who is also a multiple Paralympic medallist, having been a sighted pilot for blind or partially sighted cyclists in tandem track events. "It’s next level, being able to share in their excitement and see it through their eyes. It’s incredibly helpful to me as a mother. You think about the hours you sat up at night feeding them, and all the things that you did to nurture them the best way you can. And then they get to see you in the glare of performance, that sort of raw situation where nothing else matters." Medal after medal, Storey is testament to the simple adage that preparation is all. "If you want to be successful, you have to focus 100 per cent on the task in hand and have a strategy all the way through. The strategy helps the nerves because you know what you’re going to do." As we talk, the Paralympic emblem is emblazoned on the Arc de Triomphe, but Storey is confident Paris will pick up London’s baton in more than just branding. "Paris has seen what happened with London, how the Olympics and Paralympics co-existed. They want to make sure the Paralympics has a legacy." Ideally, it will prove to be even better. "We started a conversation in London, but it didn’t impact daily life for people with disabilities. Athletes with disabilities are provided with training opportunities and the chance to be elite. But in day-to-day life, we add hurdles to people with disabilities, because we forget to think about them. We failed to translate the gains. "The London Paralympics might have been inspiring, but it didn’t change the fact that disabled people are still left on trains because there are no ramps, or that charging cables for electric cars mean trip hazards, or that people leave Lime bikes lying on the pavement, or that roads lack curbs at the right height for a visually impaired person. All of that matters." Now is the time, she urges. "We have to change things piece by piece. Paris has the chance now to really move the dial." The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will air on Channel 4, More4 and Streaming from Wednesday 28th August 2024. Check out more of our Sport coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Nuala McGovern, the new host of Woman’s Hour, hopes to help the next generation find its voice
Add Woman’s Hour to your collection. Patience pays off. After 27 years in radio, including an award-winning stint in New York for National Public Radio (NPR), numerous shifts at the BBC World Service, bits and bobs on 5 Live and a stint covering for the main presenter, Nuala McGovern is formally installed behind the Radio 4 mic, and has been hosting Woman’s Hour Monday–Wednesday since May, when Emma Barnett moved to the Today programme. “It’s my dream gig,” says the 52-year-old Dublin-born journalist. “Best job in the BBC.” Does she finally feel, now, that she has “arrived”? It seems wrong to compare BBC outlets, but Radio 4 does have a sort of top dog feel about it. Everyone knows it, even if they don’t admit it publicly. “Well, I don’t know about a ‘pecking order’, but different parts do feel… different,” says McGovern, diplomatically. Regular listeners might not feel much has changed: last year she put in nine months on the show while Barnett was on maternity leave. Her easy manner and silky skill in doing those tricky handbrake turns between hard news and amusing features were already well established. “Some of my experience is American, and some is international,” she says. “I’ve travelled to more than 30 countries with the BBC, I’ve interviewed prime ministers and refugees. I am able to interview and find people at every level of a story.” Her time in New York is notable, not only for being where she met her future husband Tristan Agates (who now teaches horticulture at the University of Greenwich) in the famed CBGB nightclub – but also because her work at NPR won a Peabody Award for community driven radio in 2008. “With radio, you have a special position in people’s lives, an intimate connection with them. And that helps connect communities.” What sort of communities would she like to bring to Woman’s Hour? “We’ve just been to Glastonbury and also Lord’s.” No shocks there, then; the BBC gives a lot of airtime every summer to both institutions. “Well, Lord’s Cricket Ground is a very masculine space. And we interviewed the first ever female groundswoman there. But yes, I would like to go to places where we haven’t got listeners. Also, to provide something for news avoiders.” Meaning? “We want to have a space for escapism and fun. Something that is uplifting. People turn off because they fear bad news.” Whether good or bad, it’s still key to measure the news via a female-oriented lens, says McGovern. Woman’s Hour is still needed. “Because we haven’t got gender equality yet. No country has. Woman’s Hour is a very particular space for women. A space where women of all different opinions can come and express themselves.” I mention that the ascent of Kamala Harris may mean the election of the first female leader of the US. “We’re not there yet. There is progress, but it’s sort of two steps forward, one step back. Take healthcare, for example. The recent traumatic stories of women in maternity services [the UK’s first inquiry into birth trauma released its findings in May] were heartbreaking. This show traces what progress, if any, has been made. And our listeners tell us what is going on. The listeners, actually, are the joy of the job, they bring such experience and expertise to the airwaves.” She doesn’t shy away from the currently charged area of female definition. “It’s a conversation to have on Woman’s Hour, and we have had it. During the election I hosted a debate between senior women from all seven of the main political parties. I asked them all to define what a woman is. I am paid to be impartial, but it’s an issue that needs to be thrashed out.” As are some areas of the digital world. “The internet represents a new frontier for young women. Revenge porn, cyber stalking, the whole online image thing. I want to help young women navigate it, figure out the solutions.” To switch off, her leisure time is also female-orientated. “My joy is going to swim in the Ladies’ Pond at Hampstead Heath. The vibe is so different there from the Mixed Ponds. Even the sounds are different, you just hear women’s voices. I’m always hoping they will clean out the Thames so I might go swimming there, just like they’ve done in Paris with the Seine.” Is there anything she would like to change to make the world more female-centric? We discuss the problem of women’s clothes often not having pockets, but there is something else. “The height of seatbelts. They are too high! They go into my clavicle, to be honest.” Becoming a Woman’s Hour presenter places her in a long line of revered broadcasters, but former presenters have been nothing but welcoming, she says. “Jane Garvey and Emma Barnett have been wonderful. The sisterhood is real.”
Helen Glover on her Olympics journey: "My life now isn’t defined by rowing"
The Team GB rower chatted about this year's Olympics efforts in this week's issue of Radio Times magazine.
This interview was originally published in Radio Times magazine. Helen Glover won her first Olympic gold, for the women’s coxless pairs, in London 2012. She was awarded her second gold, again in the boat with Heather Stanning, in Rio four years later. The following month, she married TV naturalist Steve Backshall. Their son Logan was born in 2018 and twins – son Kit and daughter Willow – two years later in 2020. At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Glover was the first mother to row for Team GB, and achieved fourth place. Between 2015-16 she was ranked the number one female rower in the world, and she’s also a triple world champion. One would have thought there was nothing left to do, but here she is, climbing into the boat once more for the Paris Games. What is it that drives her? "Well, up until London and Rio, winning was the be-all and end-all. It was the most important thing in my life," says Glover, 38. We are sitting by the Thames at Marlow Rowing Club, near her house, which is also on the river. “But my children are so much more important than anything I do in the sporting field. My life now isn’t defined by rowing, so it gives me the freedom to go out and explore how good I can be. It’s a perspective shift.” Even without the shift caused by parenting a young family, the fact that she’s preparing for her fourth consecutive Olympics – where she was selected, alongside Tom Daley, to carry the Union flag at the opening ceremony – means Glover has an unusual view- point among athletes. How does she summarise her four Games? "At the London Games, I was young, it was a home crowd, we won the first gold for Team GB. You couldn’t write it. It was too big to even comprehend. I never thought I would be an Olympian, never mind win Olympic gold." And then? "Well, I had four years to come to terms with it, but by the time Rio came along, I had imposter syndrome." Ridiculous! "Not to me. All the wide-eyed brightness of the first Olympics had gone. I was determined to cement London and prove I wasn’t a one-off." And Tokyo? "Because of Covid, we were in isolation. Plus, I had one-year-old twins at home. Getting on the plane was my goal. So, in some ways, Tokyo was one of my proudest achievements." The support came from parents, who saw themselves in her. "People who wanted to get back into the thing they used to love before they had children." In Paris, Glover will be racing alongside Rebecca Shorten, Esme Booth and Sam Redgrave (no relation to Sir Steve) in the women’s four. Does she feel ready? "Do you ever feel ready for an Olympic Games? Now we are in the final weeks, we are kind of hoping that we’re good enough to be in the mix." Plus, it’s just over the Channel. "That was actually a really big draw for me in coming back. It feels close to a home game. You know, my relations can hop on to a train and get there. It’s the first Games since 2012 that are in our time zone. I think these Games will almost be like a throwback to London 2012, with that huge groundswell of support." Even with her vast experience and support, Glover admits she gets nervous. "But nerves are important. That feeling I have on the start line is pretty consistent from my first race, which was about 14 years ago." It doesn’t seem long enough. Before she began training as a rower, Glover was a gifted track and field athlete, en route to becoming a PE teacher. Until an inspired moment in British sports. "When I was 21, London won the bid for the Olympic Games. And they launched a talent programme to find people to compete. I signed up, but when I turned up I realised I was too short to be considered [she is 5ft 9in]. They had set the bar quite high, and women needed to be 5ft 11in, so I just thought, 'I’m just going to stand on my tiptoes.' Fortunately Paul Stannard, who became my first coach, was watching from the sidelines, and he was like, she’s the one with the most fight. And he asked me to think about joining the rowing squad." She had never sat in a boat before. "I thought I’d be picked for volleyball or something. I was so close to saying no. I’d just started working as a PE teacher and all I wanted to do was pay off my student debt. But I pictured myself in 2012 watching the Games on TV and thinking ‘I never even gave it a shot.'" Even so, when the phone call came to say she’d got through, she still hadn’t decided. "As I answered it, I didn’t know whether I was going to say yes or no. Half an hour later, I might have said no." This from a three-time world champion. "Yes, it scares me. To think about those choices you make in life, and how different everything could be." She’s still remarkably diffident about her achievements. She keeps her gold medals in a sock and doesn’t display them at home. "Steve will say, 'Hello? I’ve just put your medals back on the shelf.' I’m not hugely attached to them, in a sentimental way. The first Olympic medal I held was my own. Nobody had ever come into my school to show us a medal, or anything like that. So it’s important to me, when I go to places like Cornwall, where I grew up, to go into schools and let children feel the weight of it. Through that, I can send a message about what is possible." Glover was one of five children in what sounds like a perfectly normal, happy home in Penzance, and her father was an all-round sportsman who played rugby to a pretty high level. "I was very lucky to have a very sporty, but un-pushy family. I was just a little girl who spent time on the beach with friends collecting shells." Clearly a talented athlete, she won a sports scholarship to Millfield School. "None of my family went to private school. I never felt I belonged with a group of people who were going to go off and succeed. The kind of people who went to the Olympics were not people like me." So, what happened? "A sense that this was my last chance. I was 21, and I was given this opportunity to start rowing. It was the kick up the bum that I’d never had, and it was the first time I’d actually applied myself fully to anything. Rowing focused me into realising that you can be much more than you might have pigeonholed yourself into." Focus is possibly Glover’s superpower. Rarely have I interviewed someone who listens so intently to a question, thinks about it, and disregards a stock answer. It could be one of the reasons that she has achieved so much. Hers is a career she hopes will resonate with young people; even her own children. "Especially for my little girl. To feel deep down that she can – and should – and that there’s a place in the world for her no matter what she wants to do." She’s a trailblazer in so many ways. “The other day Kit asked, ‘Mummy, can boys row?'" She laughs. "I thought that was great, because I’ve been asked whether women can row about 100 times by strangers in the street." Of course, her three will be watching their mum compete for Team GB in Paris. She hopes it will influence them. “I want to send a message, that you can be what you want to be. That every woman, every girl, every female should have a chance to try. And it doesn’t matter if they succeed or not. But it matters that they’ve tried. And that you can return to sport after having kids. Many men in Team GB have children, and it’s not spoken about because it doesn’t change anything. And it’s expected that their careers are longer than women’s careers. But hopefully the biggest thing about these Games is how many women competitors are coming back after having children. That was a big motivator for me in Tokyo. There was this given within rowing, that for women, when you had a family… it was an assumption.” That you would stop? Correct. “There was only one way to do it. You turn up at this time and you leave at that time, and there is no space for anything else. “Now, in training, my non-negotiable with the team is that I do school pick-up. So I’m done by 3pm. It makes my day much harder, because I’m putting in the same training as everybody else, just with three hours’ less time. But part of being the best mum I can be, is being present. So even if I’m stressed or tired, I see [the children’s] faces light up when I’m at the school gate. Every time, it makes me feel I’ve got the balance right.” Will this be her last Games? The question of whether Glover will retire is a pertinent one, given that she has hung up her Team GB strip twice already – once in 2016, after she won back-to back golds in London and Rio, in order to start a family, and once in 2021 after the Tokyo Games. Would she consider it after Paris? “I think there is something that keeps the fire in your belly and keeps you coming back. I think right now, I have no intention of going back [to the sport]. But I have also said that twice before. I’m making no plans to carry on.” A long pause. “It’s a wrestle, because I also feel I could carry on, but I think, especially in this pressurised time, there is this big maternal urge within me when it’s done, to be Mum. So when I have competed, and I go back, and I’m Mum, without all the other stuff around, I think the answer will reveal itself to me. But right now, my expectation is that this Games is very likely to be my last one.” Right now, however, the Olympic Village is in her sights. “The ethos of it transcends politics. It’s the most special thing in the world. Everyone is represented: every physique, every sport, every nation. Everyone is on their own journey to get there. "There is this undertone of respect, because everyone knows that whether you are a marathon runner or play rugby sevens, you have gone through hard times. You have challenged yourself to get here. And that gives inspiration to every young person in the world. They can look at the Olympics and see role models. That’s the best thing about sport.” Does she hang out in her official kit in the Village? "The whole time. With Team GB, every day is either a red, white or blue day. The team has this great sense of togetherness." If the four make it through to the final on 1 August, what will go through her mind when she sees the finish line is beckoning? "It varies. Sometimes my thoughts are just very practical. Sometimes you count strokes. You are thinking about the race plan. Watching people in my boat. Keeping an eye on the boats around me. It can be very process-driven, without much space for emotion. But…" she smiles. "I raced in the European Championships the other week, and in the last 30 seconds I had this awareness of this bracelet," she says, holding up her wrist to display a threaded, beaded bracelet (see main picture). "My 'Mummy Bracelet', made by the kids for me. I felt it, ever so slightly, for one stroke." She pauses. "I just had this sense of feeling them there with me. It has never happened in a race before. I’ve never really thought about them, much, in a race. "But I felt this, for one stroke, and it took me away for a moment. Not in a bad way. It gave me strength, a strength that I haven’t felt before in the last 30 seconds. And so, whether I think of my children actively when I’m racing in Paris, or not, the plan is to wear it. It gives you that little bit of deep strength." The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is available to buy now – subscribe here. Don’t miss a minute of the Games with our complete 16-day Olympics TV Guide download, including how to watch all the action on TV, online, on catch-up and on the radio. Read more: Olympics TV coverage | Olympics radio coverage | Olympics presenters and commentators Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.