Programme Information

BBC Radio 1's Scott Mills is set to undertake the challenge of a lifetime when he embarks on a week of "miles from hell", all in aid of Sport Relief.

Every day, Chris Moyles (6.30-10am) gives Scott his daily "miles from hell" challenge and Scott heads into the unknown to take on his grim missions. Listeners can hear how Scott gets on by tuning into his afternoon show every weekday (4-7pm).

BBC Radio 1 listeners are encouraged to support Scott's efforts by donating money to Sport Relief and Scott's going to need all the help he can get. In his words he's got "all the gear and no idea".

Producer/Piers Bradford

BBC Radio 1 Publicity

To top

Where once record labels spent millions on glossy promotional films, bands are now doing it for themselves. Why give your money to a director and an effects team when your mate has got a great concept that could get a million hits on the internet?

BBC Radio 1 presenter Greg James tries to make a video himself for one of his favourite acts Marina And The Diamonds and, along the way, talks to the people that have helped make anyone with a camera into a video director – including Adam Buxton.

Radio 1's Story Of The DIY video is part of a line-up of documentaries that have so far included The Story Of The Noughties and International Radio 1. Alongside Nihal's Review show, and In New DJs We Trust, they sit at the heart of the weeknight schedule at 9pm.

Producer/Alice Lloyd

BBC Radio 1 Publicity

Aled Jones sits in for Sarah Kennedy this week to present The Dawn Patrol.

Presenter/Aled Jones, Producer/Julie Newman

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

To top

Ryan Tedder, from American pop-rock group One Republic, joins Ken Bruce this week to discuss his Tracks Of My Years each morning.

Listeners can also hear the Popmaster music quiz, the Record Of The Week and Album Of The Week.

Presenter/Ken Bruce, Producer/Phil Jones

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

To top

American Blues-rock guitarist and singer Joe Bonamassa

Paul Jones presents highlights from a specially recorded gig for BBC Radio 2, featuring American blues-rock guitarist and singer Joe Bonamassa at the BBC Maida Vale Studios last month.

Presenter/Paul Jones, Producer/Paul Long

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

To top

Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie bring listeners a live session from English folk-pop singer-songwriter Laura Marling.

Presenters/Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie, Producer/Viv Atkinson

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

To top

Clare Teal presents the BBC Big Band and conductor Jiggs Whigham in concert at the Town Hall in Birmingham, performing the music of Henry Mancini.

The programme features compositions and arrangements including Dreamsville, Two For The Road, Breakfast At Tiffany's, Peter Gunn and Stairway To The Stars.

Presenter/Clare Teal, Producer/Bob McDowall

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

Donald Macleod explores Prokofiev's music for stage and screen, with extracts from many of Prokofiev's opera and ballet scores alongside a selection of his film and theatre music, in this new Composer Of The Week offering.

Sergei Prokofiev was bitten early by the opera bug – when he was just eight, his parents took him to see Gounod's Faust at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and it was love at first sight. On returning home, he announced that he was going to compose an opera of his own, which he promptly did.

The Giant was no giant leap for mankind but, for the young Prokofiev, it was the first step on a path that would wind throughout his life, culminating in his operatic masterpiece, War And Peace. That early trip to the Bolshoi also exposed the young Prokofiev to Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, sparking a lifelong engagement with ballet – he was putting the finishing touches to his last ballet score on his dying day.

The same fascination for the interaction of sound and story lies behind his incidental music for film and theatre, the latter little-known today, but the former including classic collaborations with the pioneering Russian director Sergei Eisenstein.

Today's programme looks at Maddalena, the first opera Prokofiev gave an opus number to; the Scythian Suite, which started life as Ala And Lolli, an abortive commission from Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes; The Buffoon – another Diaghilev commission that this time went full-term; and an operatic gamble that eventually paid off, The Gambler, which climaxes in a scene of relentless momentum, set in the frenzied atmosphere of a casino.

Presenter/Donald Macleod, Producer/Chris Taylor

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

To top

Kirill Karabits conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, in tonight's Performance On 3, and is joined by Peter Jablonksi as soloist in Scriabin's Piano Concerto. The concert begins with Béatrice et Bénédict – the overture by Berlioz inspired by Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

Scriabin's Piano Concerto is one of his earlier works – technically demanding but, in a Romantic idiom, full of charm and filigree fingerwork reminiscent of Chopin.

Tchaikovsky found himself briefly free from a catalogue of personal crises in the late 1880s, and his Fifth Symphony reflects this with moments of comfort and warmth. Dazzling shafts of bright optimism are cast like lightning bolts from the brooding orchestral shadows.

Presenter/Petroc Trelawny, Producer/Peter Thresh

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

To top

The Essay – Karachi Postcards Ep 1/5

Monday 15 to Friday 19 March

11.00-11.15pm BBC RADIO 3

London-based novelist Kamila Shamsie returns to Karachi every January to see her family and old friends. For her, the city has a fresh and often surprising quality to it now that she no longer lives there.

Over five "postcards" for The Essay this week, Kamila explores the city of her birth in this uncertain and often intriguing light. In today's programme, the experience of arrival is a big deal. Outside the sleek, spare, deserted airport terminal, all of Karachi's life comes towards you.

Presenter/Kamila Shamsie, Producer/Duncan Minshull

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Book Of The Week –
Chopin: Prince Of The Romantics Ep 1/5

Monday 15 to Friday 19 March

9.45-10.00am BBC RADIO 4

Celebrating 200 years since the birth of the great Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin, this biography charts the composer's brief but eventful life, from Polish child prodigy, to celebrated dandy in Paris, his turbulent relationship with George Sand and early death, penniless, in Paris.

Born in Poland in 1810, Frédéric Chopin's prodigious talent as a pianist was recognised early on. But despite being lauded as the great nationalist hope in his homeland, the teenage Chopin soon became stifled by the provincialism of Warsaw. Arriving in bohemian Paris at the age of 20, he immediately became a celebrated figure in French society, known for his inspirational playing and dandyism. Meanwhile, Poland was being torn apart by revolution, and the young exile realised that he would never see his homeland again.

But behind the glittering career, Chopin had to contend with deteriorating health and an ever-more turbulent private life. His relationship with the most notorious woman of the age – the cigar-smoking, cross-dressing, party-going novelist George Sand – raised eyebrows at the time, but lead him to produce some of his great works. Yet, as the relationship and his health continued to fail, he struggled to find inspiration. After eventful trips to London and Scotland, he returned to Paris. There, relying on the benevolence of his friends, he retreated to his apartment where he prepared for his death. Chopin died, aged 39, in Paris – his carefully orchestrated funeral was recognised as one of the most lavish the city had ever seen.

Reader/Stephen Campbell Moore, Producer/Justine Willett

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Woman's Hour Drama – The Cloths Of Heaven Ep 1/5

Monday 15 to Friday 19 March

10.45-11.00am BBC RADIO 4

In Sue Eckstein's dramatisation of her own novel, British diplomat Daniel Maddison on his first posting to West Africa, finds himself rebelling against the traditional round of ex-pat cocktail parties, golf and gossip.

In search of something more stimulating he wanders through the town markets – where he becomes fascinated by Rachel, a white woman who sells cloth for a Lebanese trader. Rachel looks like someone he'd known as a student at Oxford – but, unnervingly, she doesn't seem to recognise him.

Daniel decides to explore the "real" country inland – where he unexpectedly crosses paths again with Rachel – and discovers the truth about Rachel's relationship with the wealthy cloth merchant Kamal.

As a student at Oxford, Rachel had been in love with Kamal's twin brother before his sudden death after a short illness. Her decision to take up with Kamal in West Africa has been a fruitless attempt to have a child and so maintain a blood link with her dead lover.

At first Rachel is angry at the thought that she might be being stalked by Daniel but gradually they drift into an affair – with surprising results.

Ruth Gemmell stars as Rachel, Matthew Pidgeon as Daniel and Raad Rawi as Kamal. The cast also inlcudes David Robb, Briony McRoberts, Damian Lynch, Bruce Alexander, Joanna Munro and Nigel Hastings.

Producer/Bruce Young

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

BBC Radio 4 presenter Sandi Toksvig

Sandi Toksvig explores the new Human Library movement, which offers the chance to borrow living people instead of books – an idea which aims to tear down prejudices about people.

"Borrow a person you normally think you wouldn't like", says Danish anti-violence campaigner Ronni Abergel, who came up with the idea.

Even those who claim to be entirely free of prejudice find they do have pre-conceived ideas about certain kinds of people.

Ronni believes that only by sitting down for a totally frank – even blunt – half-hour, face-to-face talk can someone establish the truth or otherwise of their pre-conceptions. People can ask the kind of questions they never hear asked in the public domain.

The idea spread from Denmark to Sweden, where, realising that books are not the only things being judged by their covers, libraries gave visitors the opportunity to borrow "books" including a Muslim, a lesbian, a transexual, a pro-lifer, a male nanny, a bank robber and a Dane.

Human Libraries are spreading across the world, and have now arrived in the UK. This year the government are funding Human Library events at libraries around the UK.

Sandi talks to those who have become involved, both as "readers" and "books", borrows some "books" and may even volunteer to be a living book herself.

Presenter/Sandi Toksvig, Producer/Beth O'Dea

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Afternoon Play – Hitched Ep 1/2

Monday 15 March

2.15-3.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Hitched is today's Afternoon Play offering, and features the wedding day of Emma and Richard from the viewpoints of their respective families – including the dress, the food, the speeches, the music, who wore what, who said what, what cost what, the secrets, the lies, the smiles and the tears.

Emma and Richard have done their best to keep their respective families apart but, as their wedding day approaches, it is time for the in-laws-to-be to finally meet. But how will Emma's atheist father, Max, and "slightly too fond of the grape" mother, Ellie, divorced, not exactly amicably, get along with Richard's bullish and opinionated father, Barry, and rather put-upon mother, Jenny?

With Emma's grandfather, Chas, and Richard's grandmother, Ruby, both along for the ride, the stage is set for a fiery clash of personalities before the reception has even started.

Two Afternoon Plays track the events of one couple's big day, creating a social satire on the modern-day obsession with weddings.

Written by acclaimed dramatist Doug Lucie, Hitched goes behind the scenes as one couple promise to love each other "for better or worse", but who knows which it will be?

The cast features Lydia Leonard as Emma, William Gaunt as Chas, Joe Armstrong as Richard, Sylvia Syms as Ruby, Stephen Moore as Max and Ian Reddington as Barry. Other cast members include Frances Barber, Michale Colgan, Cheryl Campbell, Nicky Henson and Michael Shelford. The vicar is played by Guy Henrie.

Producer/Heather Larmour

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Rory Bremner meets Barry Murphy, dubbed the "Don of Irish comedy" by the Irish Times, as the three-part comedy series which engages topical comics, satirists and comedians from different countries about their cultures continues.

Each show features plenty of performance material, intimate comic exchanges between Rory and a guest, providing an understanding of the differences between our cultures.

Presenter/Rory Bremner, Producer/Andrew McGibbon

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Monday 15 March

7.00-10.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Mark Chapman has all the day's sports news and is joined by special guests for the Monday Night Club to discuss the latest big issues in football.

From 8pm there's Premier League commentary of Liverpool versus Portsmouth, live from Anfield.

Presenter/Mark Chapman, Producer/Tom Peach

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Test Match Special

Monday 15 March

3.15-11.00am BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Uninterrupted commentary on the fourth day of the first Test between Bangladesh and England comes live from Chittagong with the Test Match Special commentary team.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

BBC 6 Music presenter Lauren Laverne

Brooklyn-based indie folk band Grizzly Bear are back in the UK to play two sold-out dates at The Roundhouse, in Camden. They join Lauren Laverne in conversation and play two live tracks from last year's album, Veckatimest.

Presenter/Lauren Laverne, Producer/Gary Bales

BBC 6 Music Publicity

To top

Singer-songwriter, and member of Jack White's band The Raconteurs, Brendan Benson, handpicks a selection of his favourite songs for this week's lunchtime playlist. Brendan recorded his fourth solo album, My Old Familiar Friend, in Nashville and London with Gil Norton.

Presenter/Nemone, Producer/Jax Coombes

BBC 6 Music Publicity

To top

Marc Riley introduces London-based band Wolf People to listeners this evening as they perform live in session.

Wolf People is made up of Jack Sharp (guitar and vocals), Joe Hollick (guitar), Tom Watt (drums) and Daniel Davies (bass).

The band has had consistent support from BBC 6 Music presenter Stuart Maconie since their inception in 2006, a badge of honour indeed.

Presenter/Marc Riley, Producer/Michelle Choudhry

BBC 6 Music Publicity

To top

Gideon Coe's archive sessions come courtesy of Lloyd Cole And The Commotions playing for BBC Radio 1 in 1984, Joni Mitchell from 1968, Snuff from 1989, plus former Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall playing a session for Marc Riley, recorded in July last year.

Presenter/Gideon Coe, Producer/Frank Wilson

BBC 6 Music Publicity

To top

Record producer Craig Leon tells the story of American punk rock – from the Sixties garage bands of the Pacific North West through to the Stooges, the New York punk scene and beyond.

This programme continues at the same time all week, concluding on Thursday.

Presenter/Craig Leon, Producer/Frank Wilson

BBC 6 Music Publicity

Dr Masud goes through some old family photos and even finds some of the Bradys, in the first visit of the week to Silver Street. He and Mary agree to have a proper trip down memory lane soon.

Elsewhere, Sway is struggling to get the van started and awkwardly tells Kuls he is running late for a job interview. Will Kuls help him or has the old friendship soured too much?

Meanwhile, Rita is delighted when the Chauhans get a surprise visitor but Kamla seems unhappy...

Dr Masud is played by Saeed Jaffrey, Mary by Carole Nimmons, Sway by Nicholas Bailey, Kuljit by Sartaj Garewal, Rita by Bharti Patel and Kamla by Surendra Kochar.

BBC Asian Network Publicity