Friday 31 December - New Year's Eve
Veg Talk
3.00-3.30pm
Veg Talk takes to the road for a tantalisingly tasty festive feast.
Gregg Wallace and Charlie Hicks dine
at Café Spice in London with award-winning chef Cyrus Todiwala who cooks
some hot and spicy Indian dishes and serves up a platter of winter warmers
with a difference.
Members of a live audience ask all about Indian cooking and Cyrus demonstrates
his flair for the innovative fusion of flavours.
Presenter/Gregg Wallace and Charlie Hicks, Producer/Dixi Stewart
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
Correspondents Look Ahead
1/1 8.00-8.50pm
BBC correspondents look into their crystal balls to predict the big developments
across the world this coming year.
Once again they lay their hard-earned reputations on the line to discuss
the key events and themes they expect to see in the year ahead and to
dissect the year gone by.
Presenter/Stephen Sackur, Producer/Rosie Goldsmith
BBC News Publicity
Friday Play - In The Bosom Of The Family
1/1 9.00-10.00pm
This darkly comic fable tells how the revenge plans for a New Year's
Eve party go horribly wrong, as two wicked sisters plan the downfall of
the third and most successful one.
Mary Rose has always been the snob of the family, the overachiever who
looked down on her younger siblings, Jean and Fay.
She has kept quiet the fact that when she was young, she had a son by
her first marriage who went off the rails, was heavily into drugs and
was sent to Canada so she could get on with her life.
This enabled her to avoid having his reputation hanging round her neck
as she went on to her second and more successful marriage to a wealthy
businessman.
Fay and Jean have secretly tracked down Mary Rose's son and arranged
for him to come back to the 'bosom of the family' so that he can be sprung
out on the stroke of midnight, dressed in the kind of gear they imagine
him to be wearing these days and thus shock Mary Rose's friends.
But when they go to the airport, they are shocked to discover a suave,
beautifully dressed young man who has clearly changed his ways and who
will not be at all right to carry out the spectacular shock they had planned
for their wicked sister.
They are going to have to think of something else, and fast as there
are only a few days to go before New Year's Eve.
Written by Melissa Murray, the cast includes Samantha Bond
as Jean, Maggie Steed as Fay and Dermot Crowley
as Jerry.
Producer/Cherry Cookson
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
Fanshawe Gets To The Bottom Of…The Party Spirit
2/2 11.00-11.30pm
A time for reflection on the past and resolutions for the future, New
Year's Eve is a funny time of year.
Join Simon Fanshawe for a jolly end to 2004 with clips
from the comedy archive including Flanders and Swan,
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and Jo Brand
with readings from the works of Quentin Crisp and George Mikes by the
inimitable Bill Wallis.
Presenter/Simon Fanshawe, Producer/Paul Dodgson
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
Great Lives: Robert Burns
10.15-10.45pm
In this special Hogmanay edition of Great Lives, singer/songwriter Eddi
Reader nominates the Scottish poet Robert Burns as her Great
Life.
Eddi Reader first came into the limelight with the group Fairground
Attraction, with the song Perfect and album First of a Million Kisses
both topping the UK charts.
Growing up in an oppressive suburb in Glasgow, Eddi soon became established
as one of Scotland's most vibrant solo artistes.
Her most recent album is Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns.
She tells Humphrey Carpenter how and why she was inspired
by a poor farmer who became known for the traditional New Year song Auld
Lang Syne.
Presenter/Humphrey Carpenter, Producer/Peter Everett
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
Hamish And Dougal Hogmanay Special
1/1 11.30pm-midnight
Hamish and Dougal, the two Scotsmen, invite you to see in the New Year
from the vantage point of their Highland home.
Performed by Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden,
this Hogmany Special also features Alison Steadman as
Mrs Naughtie, Hamish and Dougal's long-suffering housekeeper, Jeremy
Hardy as the local laird, and several surprise celebrity guests.
Music is specially arranged by John Garden, son of Graeme and keyboard
player with the hugely successful Scissor Sisters, and performed by a
four-piece ceilidh band.
Producer/Ann Osborne
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
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