Home | In Production | Archive | Contact

The Best Tunes (Winter 2007)
BBC Radio 4

God and the Devil have both been played for laughs in vehicles as diverse as medieval mystery plays and movies, as well as in literature and TV, cartoons and opera. These two programmes look at how the almighty and the dark one are portrayed, and whether it's true that the Devil wins out when it comes to entertainment.

Trouble in Tots' TV Land (31st August 2007)
BBC Radio 4

The business and ethics of pre-school TV on the Teletubbies' tenth anniversary. It's  a subject of intense commercial activity - a rare case of a theoretically benign and lucrative TV genre.   However, with other forms of TV losing its audience, TV for babies is now a growing sector, despite expert opinion that it's potentially damaging. 

Fixing Families (6 August 2007)
BBC Radio 4

A look at a unique and controversial project set up on a council estate in Dundee which repairs and rehouses anti-social families in the heart of the same community that has had to put up with their bad behaviour. The Dundee Families Housing Project Unit, whose Core Unit is known to the tabloids as Colditz.  
 
 

Current Puns (Summer 2007)
BBC Radio 4

It's possibly the most ubiquitous comic device, and probably the most despised. Stephen Fry, a self confessed glutton for pun-ishment, celebrates the return of groan-inducing word play and meets practitioners like monster punster Tim Vine and the man who puts puns in Christmas Crackers.

What The Critics Said…
“… wonderful...Fry at His Cleverest”
The Sunday Times
“...entertaining and surprisingly intelligent”
The Observer

Ha Ha Science, Ha Ha Foreign Languages (Winter 2006)
BBC Radio 4

Two more in Nick Baker's occasional series looking at the laughter behind the learning and understanding of serious subjects. In Science we learn where the mad scientist stereotype really comes from. In Ha Ha Foreign languages we hear why the mixed messages of language-learning makes for laughter. And why laughter can help people understand more and memorise more vocabulary

White Face Dark Heart (Winter 2006)
BBC Radio 4

They sell burgers, wear red noses and throw custard pies. There's not that much more to Clowns, you might have thought. But writer and comedian Stewart Lee here unveils a more complex side of the clowning tradition to reveal the clown as moralist and dissident, a figure with what some see as a sacred right to offend.

Men of Stone (Summer 2006)
BBC Radio 4

The story of Portland Stone, the building material of Broadcasting House and centuries of other city buildings worldwide. These programmes touch on the geology and landscape of the 'island' the stone comes from, the social history of the people who quarried it, and the architecture of the buildings made from it, as well as examining the stone's cultural, historical and environmental legacy.

What's Right What's Left (Spring 2006)
BBC Radio

These two debates for argue over whether the terms "left" and "right" have any lasting significance in a democracy and ask whether democracy can do without them. Both debates, one about the left, one about the right, pit ideologues against moderates. Norman Tebbit, Harriet Harman, Roy Hattersley and Theresa May were among the 2 programmes' panels

The Joy Of Gibberish (Jan 2006)
BBC Radio 4: 1 X 30 minutes

Stephen Fry on the joy of gobbledegook in comedy, drama, children's programmes and song. Bill and Ben, Stanley Unwin, the Teletubbies and scat singers like Ella Fitzgerald all get away with talking (and singing) a load of rubbish. We seem to revel in pleasing but meaningless speech and pleasant songs that signify nothing. On closer examination, they often signify quite a lot. This programme celebrates great gibberers, and offers a serious linguistic explanation of their entertainment value and intelligibility.

Producer: Ian Gardhouse

What The Critics Said… “… a frabjous survey of nonsense speak, notable for offering Mary Poppins sung in Hebrew, the two-times table chanted in Dutch (“double Dutch”), and the relish with which Fry says “cunning linguists”.
The Sunday Times

A Debt to Society (Jan 2006)
BBC Radio 4: 2 x 30 minutes

Nick Baker joins a range of people from first time offenders to habitual criminals as they carry out their community service orders. He’ll be investigating their experiences, and will find out whether they view community punishment as a deterrent or just a soft alternative to prison. He’ll also ask some tough questions of judges, magistrates and government ministers about the value and future of community service.

Producer: Brian King

Songs In the Key of Lennon (Dec 2005)
BBC Radio 4: 5 x 15 minutes

To mark the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death on 8th December 1980 , Robert Sandall presents five snapshots of Lennon's life as illuminated by five songs he wrote about key relationships, and demonstrates how those relationships made him the man and song-writer he was.

Producer: Alison Vernon-Smith

What the Critics Said…
“…a couple of programmes seemed to push towards something deeper. One was Songs in the Key of Lennon ….The programme worked partly because of good interviews. Cynthia, his first wife, came across as fiercely bright and compassionate. And partly because, as Sandall made clear, autobiography was central to Lennon's conception of music: to interpret his songs outside a biographical context is to miss most of what makes them work. It made me think better of Lennon as an artist and a person.”
Robert Hanks
The Independent

Trafalgar Trail (Oct 2005)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

Nelson's Column in London dates from 1843, almost forty years after the Battle of Trafalgar, but other places at home and abroad were quicker off the mark in honouring Britain's greatest seaman. Nick Utechin goes in search of other columns and uncovers the strangest Trafalgar Square in the country.

Producer: Merylin Harris

What the Critics said:
Nick Utechin…. takes in Trafalgar Squares and Streets and various Nelson’s columns in Ireland , Scotland and even the Caribbean . The tales associated with each location or monument are truly entertaining and it’s satisfying for non-Londoners to learn that the most famous column of all was one of the last to be constructed: for once the capital city was not so quick off the mark.”
Radio Times

Losing It (Sep 2005)
Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

Forty-percent of men over the age of 35 lose their hair - and they don't all think it's a joke. Among them, Martin Plimmer examines the psychology of baldness and learns how reactions can range from grudging acceptance to thoughts of suicide. One man lost his hair and then his wife; others mortgage the house to finance hugely expensive, but ineffective treatments. And the one drug which might offer some reprieve from the tyranny of male-pattern baldness, turns out to reduce sex drive.

Producer: Brian King

What the Critics said:
Is there any more humiliating experience for a man than losing his hair? Yeah, OK, that one. And that one. But other than those, balding is the pits, as Martin Plimmer demonstrates in this moving half-hour. He talks to a man whose marriage fell apart when he lost his hair, hears about a woman who killed herself because of it, and meets Laurence Olivier's trichologist, who reveals that the great actor, desperately ill in hospital, fretted far more about his failing barnet.
Chris Campling
The Times

Archive Hour: To Win The Peace (July 2005)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 60 minutes

At the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Winston Churchill - the architect of Hitler's downfall - called a General Election, hoping to reinforce politically his pre-eminent position in the eyes of the British people. In the event, Labour won with a landslide majority. The BBC's former Political Editor, John Cole, tells the story of this watershed election.
Producer: Nick Utechin

What the Critics said:
BBC radio at its best..The 1945 general election was a remarkable moment in British history and a copy of this superbly evocative and moving programme should be available in all our schools. There are so many lessons here to be learned. Above all, I was moved by the sense of hope, the belief that the will to plan and get things done overrides every obstacle allegedly made apparent by accountants' views of what can be done. This was the power of social commitment.
Robert Giddings
Tribune

The Riot That Never Was (June 2005)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

In January 1926, 12 years before Orson Welles's infamous 'War of the Worlds' broadcast, the BBC sparked a national panic of its own. It broadcast a 17-minute report of a murderous riot in central London, which turned out to be a spoof, masterminded by a literary Catholic priest. This feature tells the so far untold story of the broadcast, puts it in historical context and explains its significance in the history of broadcasting.

Presenter: Ray Snoddy
Producers: Paul Slade & Nick Baker

What the Critics said:
Once in a while, Radio 4 comes up with something fascinating that I didn't know about before. In the throwaway 11:30am slot today we had a nice hidden gem, The Riot That Never Was, a documentary about a 1926 spoof newscast by Ronald Knox that led to mass panic among listeners to the young medium, some twelve years before the more celebrated War of The Worlds drama..And lest you fear the documentary itself to be a spoof, the incident is also mentioned in his biography
Chris Brown, Faynights.blogspot.com

To listen to The Riot That Never Was in full, and to read and hear more click here