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Cutting a Dash - Reflections on Punctuation (Dec 2002)
BBC Radio 4: 5 x 15 minutes

Punctuation is an art, rather than an exact science. Regardless of the rules we learn at school, every writer has a personal approach. It reflects a writer's need to make text live. How people punctuate their writing depends on their education and class: people get hot under the collar about misused apostrophes for entirely snobbish reasons. Punctuation also reflects change...email and text messages have ushered in a new era for the written word. Yet the iconography of email and text messaging (:-) leads strangely back to the beginnings of the dots and dashes....

Presenter: Lynne Truss
Producer: Penny Vine

What the critics said...
In this new series of sparkling essays, Lynne Truss explores the rules and history of British punctuation. Possessive and contractive apostrophes are easy to grhtml but should not be confused with the adding of a final "s" to indicate a plural. But people do it all the time. Why?
Gillian Reynolds
The Telegraph

Rookie Reverends (Dec 2002)
BBC Radio 4: 2 x 30 minutes

In an increasingly secular age, deciding to become a Church of England priest might seem a less than attractive career choice. We meet the people who have set their hearts and souls on becoming men and women of the cloth. Having worked their way through Theology College, they are about to step into their first parish jobs. The programe examines their ambition, faith, doubts, hopes and fears.

Presenter: Alex Kirby
Producer: Brian King

What the critics said...
Don't fake your CV when applying to be an Anglican priest - their research is good. In this sweet new series, a training college selector tells hopefuls: "We want the real you - that's the one God knows". The conditions are not encouraging. In her first curacy, Liz Law was spat at by a parishioner who objected to women priests.
Sunday Telegraph

Refugee Doctors (Dec 2002)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

The personal stories of one or two qualified doctors who have fled persecution in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan or Iran and are attempting to enter medical practice in Britain, recorded over a year. A new perspective on asylum seekers/refugees, concentrating on their positive potential.

Producer: Brian King
Presenter: Sarah Vermont

What the critics said...
Timely documentary on how doctors trained in other countries, who have come to Britain as refugees, are being re-trained to cope with the many challenges of working within the NHS.
Gillian Reynolds
The Telegraph

Unschooled (Nov 2002)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

Maud Hand investigates what adult life is like for people who never went to school, and discovers some interesting professional and social trends among a small but diverse sample.

Producer: Nick Baker

What the critics said...
Unschooled promises to be one of those programmes that people will talk about for years to come. It's an account by Maud Hand of the one per cent of Britain's children educated outside the school system, usually by parents at home.
Gillian Reynolds
The Daily Telegraph

The Onion and the Apple (Nov 2002)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

Nick Baker spends a week with the American counterpart to Private Eye that specialises in pithy headlines like TROPHY WIFE MOUNTED. Onion writers recall what happened when a cult paper that started in a midwestern town moved to New York in a week not noted for laugh-worthy events: September 2001.

Producer: Viv Black

What the critics said...
With headlines like "Woody Allen's third wife born.". The Onion has carved itself a niche as America's own Private Eye.Presenter Nick Baker, always great value, spends a week with The Onion staff, to watch them test the outer limits of contemporary American humour.
Radio Times

Rabbiting on (Oct 2002)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 60 minutes

In the centenary year of Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit, Nick Baker celebrates 100 years of the rabbit as literary, cultural and iconic figure. Despite the fact that real rabbits are edible and known as pests, we admire them as survivors. If the easter bunny stands for renewal, then Bugs, Brer and the gang stand for the survival instinct turned into a tongue in cheek street wisdom. But let's face it, what rabbits are most famous for is multiplying - the ultimate survival technique... With clips from the creator of Bugs Bunny, Chuck Jones and Mel Blanc. We also hear from Hugh Hefner, Ezra Pound and Watership Down.

Producer: Viv Black

What the critics said...
" . Nick Baker digs up all sorts of bunny-related material. We learn how rabbits were probably introduced from southern Europe and had to be encouraged how to burrow to survive the British climate. Then there's the skit which posits Peter Rabbit as a disturbed young bunny driven to steal from Mr Mcgregor's garden. 'What about the radishes?' asks an interviewer. 'They were planted,' replies Peter. Funny and fascinating by turns.
The Sunday Telegraph

High Low Fast Slow (Aug 2002)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

Musician and broadcaster Tim Healey charts the physical extremes of music. The programme discusses the psychological and physiological effect very high, very low, very fast and very slow music has on the listener. They also explain how these extremities in pitch and tempo are reached, and at what cost to the player and played-to. With examples from many musical genres; from pop to opera, and from bluegrass to Mongolian throat singing.

Producer: Dilly Barlow

The Ages of Elizabeth (June 2002)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

Elizabeth - A Gift from God. A name from The Bible that has held its place in the top ten for 400 years. As part of the celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee, actress Liz Smith follows the story of six Elizabeths as they chart their relationship with their malleable name. There's Elizabeth who defends her name with poetry. Elizabeth who becomes Lizzi and then Lady Lisa. There's Elizabeth who wanted to be Kelly but ended up as Lizzy, and Elizabeth who cannot use her name. Elizabeth who has tried Beth, Betty and Eliza, but succumbed to Liz. And then there's Elizabeth, who at the tender age of six had mounted a determined defence of her name - uncut, unedited, and untouched.

Producer: Mary Price

What the critics said...
".. An affectionate tussle with what a name can mean to the person it is bestowed upon....it was an indulgent half hour of revelling in the malleability, aristocracy and haughty loveliness of our personal nametag. ...Tucked between name-centred reflections on where exactly identity lies ("you might say that Elizabeth left and Lizzie arrived" was how one woman explained a life-changing moment) nuggets of social history shimmered....There were also heartbreakingly sweet tales by Elizabeths."
Elisabeth Mahoney
The Guardian

Disneyfied (Nov 2001)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

What happened when Walt Disney turned five classic pieces of children's fiction into animated movies? The most widely recognised images we have now of Snow White, Pinocchio, 101 Dalmatians, Mary Poppins and Jungle Book come from the Disney studios. But how true are they to the stories on which they are they are based? Phill Jupitus enlists the help of cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, composer Sir Tim Rice, an educational psychologist and some well-read young filmgoers to examine the Disney effect. Walt certainly changed the stories - but for better or for worse?

Producer: Kirsten Lass

What the critics said...
"In Disneyfied, Phill Jupitus marks the centenary of Walt Disney's birth by asking whether the animator did justice to his literary sources or whether, as some people believe, he 'simplified and sweetened' them. Jupitus uses characters such as the terrifying queen in the film of Snow White to argue that Disney was not afraid to explore darker themes. He also applauds the films' invention and humour; the cricket in Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio story died two pages after his first appearance, whereas in the movie he becomes the puppet boy's conscience and a perky character in his own right. "
Stephen Billen
The Observer

The Other Disney (Nov 2001)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 30 minutes

Walt Disney's name is synonymous with cartoons, but Walt had a mission to educate as well as entertain. Brian Sibley celebrates the little-seen natural history and live action historical films that poured out of the Disney studios in the 1950's, and examines their impact on popular culture and natural history broadcasting.

Producer: Nick Utechin

What the critics said...
"Brian Sibley was in a celebratory mood in The Other Disney, a loving look at Walt's natural history and live action historical films from the 50's. Authenticity was never really the thing, it seems. Desmond Morris said it was "naughty" of Disney to manipulate nature images in his films, such as the dancing scorpions sequence complete with square dancing music. Naughty, but nice, too, to hear again."
Elisabeth Mahoney
The Guardian

Archive Hour: Double Disney (Nov 2001)
BBC Radio 4: 1 x 60 minutes

Russell Davies examines the two faces of Walt Disney. On the one side there was "Uncle Walt", who brought laughter to millions: then there was the businessman worried about "Reds under the bed", with multi-million dollar ideas about social engineering. Which Disney does the archive favour?

Producer: Nick Utechin

What the critics said...
"...a lot of familiar material about the birth of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, but some less well-known stuff about the origins of Disney World. Ray Bradbury, the science fiction writer, recalls that Disney didn't like the way that circuses and carnivals seemed in his view, to be run by psychos and freaks. He wanted good clean wholesome fun. We hear warm memories of Disney from the likes of Hayley Mills and Richard Todd, rather less warm ones from those, including Peggy Lee, who had financial dealings with Uncle Walt."
The Daily Mail

Beyond Coincidence (Sept 2001)
BBC Radio 4: 5 x 15 minutes

This series tries to better understand the phenomena of coincidences - from incidents of receiving phone calls from people at the moment you think of them - to the fabled coincidences connecting the deaths of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy. Since Journalist Martin Plimmer began making these programmes, so many coincidences happened around him that he began to feel stalked. Newspapers fell open at accounts of coincidences. Interviewees, at the moment we rang them, were interrupted in the act of writing about coincidence. Beyond Coincidence finds out if there's anything in it.

Producer: Brian King

What the critics said...
"..good tales of shiver-me-timbers synchronicity, but best were the details of how coincidence "stalked" the programme-makers once they began researching the show. Asking people in a bus queue for their dates of birth (it took 29 attempts to find two the same), they found a woman with the same birthday as four of her friends and her boyfriend, and Zach, "the only man in London to have dedicated his life to coincidence", running websites aplenty on the subject."
Elisabeth Mahoney
The Guardian

Under The Covers (Sept 2001)
BBC Radio 4: 3 x 30 minutes

This three part series goes behind the scenes at the England and Wales Cricket Board during a summer of high drama and controversy on and off the field of play. It follows ECB chairman Lord MacLaurin, chief executive Tim Lamb and other senior ECB executives as they wrestle with match-fixing allegations, violent pitch invasions, the loss through injury of captain Nasser Hussein and a series of disastrous defeats. Floods, foot and mouth, and a Russian mafia porn invasion onto the ECB website.

Presenter: Nick Clarke
Producer: Brian King

What the critics said...
".. funny, clear-eyed (just as well for no one gives even such a respected reporter full access unless there is hope of some flatteringly soft focus here and there). It began last night on a note of optimism, but because he was talking spring and we're now in the autumn, we knew what lay ahead. Sure enough, problems with the commercial plan, the weather, the sponsors and the matches all bubbled up and, sometimes over. There are two more parts to come. I can't wait."
Gillian Reynolds
The Daily Telegraph

Kids in Committee (June 2001)
BBC Radio 4: 2 x 30 minutes

Eight months in the life of Britain's newest legislative body - the Liverpool Schools' Parliament. Liverpool children and young people followed the complete legislative process and now have a recognised voice on Liverpool City Council. Children as young as nine campaigned on issues from skirt length to mobile phone masts. Meanwhile, in faraway London, another election got under way, leading to a brief summit between Tony Blair and the Liverpool Schools Prime Minister and her deputy, Anne Ajani and Diana Owusu (see left).

Presenter: Nick Baker
Producer: Maud Hand

Spies Like Us (May 2001)
BBC Radio 4: 2 x 60 minutes

Fifty years after the event, Simon Hoggart recalls the cloak and dagger story of the escape of Britain's most famous double agents, Burgess and Maclean, and with the help of the latest available documents, assesses the damage done to the west's intelligence services. It's now generally agreed that the pairs' exploits didn't do as much harm as was generally claimed.

Producer: Anne-Marie Cole

What the critics said...
"Burgess was 11 when he was awakened one night by his mother screaming and when he ran into her bedroom he found her struggling under the weight of his father's dead body. He had had a heart attack while they were making love. Treachery is a serious subject but somehow Simon Hoggart's breezy account of the recruiting and running of Cambridge's Famous Five led by Kim Philby made them less ruthless than roguish."
Sue Arnold
The Observer