Programme Information

Snow Patrol perform tracks from their last three platinum-selling albums as well as an exclusive cover for BBC Radio 2's Great British Songbook, live from the Maida Vale studios.

Alesha Dixon also picks her Tracks Of My Years each morning this week, from Monday to Friday, on Ken's show. Formerly one third of the female R&B group Mis-Teeq, Alesha is now enjoying success as a solo artist and was crowned the winner of the BBC One hit show Strictly Come Dancing in 2007.

Presenter/Ken Bruce, Producer/Gary Bones

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

To top

Midge Ure joins Jools Holland and his Rhythm Section this week.

Midge first rose to fame as a teenager when his band, Slik, took over the number one spot from Abba's Mamma Mia in 1976. He was then snapped up by ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock for The Rich Kids, before joining Ultravox, the band which influenced the new romantic and electro-pop movements of the early Eighties.

He is an award-winning songwriter, who composed the Band Aid hit Do They Know It's Christmas? with Bob Geldof, and has been a successful solo artist since 1985.

This year, Midge is getting back together with the other members of Ultravox for the first time since performing at Live Aid in 1985, for a UK reunion tour that includes the Isle Of Wight festival.

Presenter/Jools Holland, Producer/Sarah Gaston

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

This week, Donald Macleod explores a single decade of Bach's life – his time at the ducal court of Weimar between 1708 and 1717. In an odd situation, Bach found himself at the behest of two dukes who simply could not abide each other. Bach risked all by working for both, producing mighty cantatas and organ works for the so-called "Heaven's Palace" of Duke Wilhelm, while teaching the page of the younger Duke Ernst.

Out-manoeuvring both the dukes and his musical rivals to get pay rises and promotion, there was a serious side to Bach's career in Weimar – a time when he composed with a freedom afforded to him neither before nor after. Bach perfected his skills as a virtuoso performer, dazzled with his most extrovert organ works, and began the monthly series of cantatas which formed perhaps his greatest legacy. His musical view was broadened more than ever by encounters with the music of Vivaldi and the great Italians.

In today's programme, Bach's arrival at Weimar is marked by his receipt of a uniform allowance and allocations of wheat, barley, firewood and tax-free beer. Music includes the Concerto for 3 Harpsichords BWV 1064 and movements from his Orgelbüchlein, a planned 164 settings of chorale melodies.

Presenter/Donald Macleod, Producer/Michael Surcombe

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

To top

Mezzo Alice Coote and her recital partner, pianist Julius Drake perform a British song recital, including Elgar, Quilter, Gurney, Warlock, Vaughan Williams, Britten and Judith Weir.

Alice and Julius are in demand throughout Europe and the USA. This recital is a fascinating collection of mainly British songs, from the pastoral evocations of Warlock, Peel and Gurney, to the contemporary settings of bird poems by Bridges, Keats and Hardy composed for tonight's performers by Judith Weir. This recital is not just full of beautiful melodies; it's also a compendium of great British literature, including settings of Blake, Burns, Edward Thomas, Tennyson and Housman. The only non-British composer featured is American Dominick Argento, who sets texts from the diary of Virginia Woolf.

This week's Performance On 3 also features recordings by past winners of the RPS awards, which celebrate their 20th anniversary this year. Tonight, Sir Charles Mackerras, winner of the 2004 Radio 3 Listeners Award, conducts the Welsh National Opera Orchestra in Delius's variations on an English folksong, Brigg Fair.

Presenter/Martin Handley, Producer/Philip Tagney

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Book Of The Week – My Name Is Daphne Fairfax Ep 1/5

Monday 11 May

9.45-10.00am BBC RADIO 4

Arthur Smith's opening line at hundreds of stand-up gigs has been: "My name is Arthur Smith, unless there's anybody here from the Streatham tax office. In which case, I'm Daphne Fairfax."

In fact, he is neither Daphne nor Arthur. Friends and family know him as Brian.

One of the alternative comedians who shook up light entertainment in the Eighties and Nineties, Arthur (and Brian) is also a broadcaster, an opening bat for Grumpy Old Men, a West End playwright and a guest on innumerable radio and TV panel shows. He has reluctantly become a national treasure.

In My Name Is Daphne Fairfax, he reflects on the nature of comedy and his days as a road sweeper, an English teacher, a failed rock star, a boozed-up sexual adventurer and an intensive-care patient who has been told never to drink again.

Moving and mocking, his memoir incorporates a tender tribute to his parents, a visit to Colditz with his PoW father and a vigorous account of the peculiar business of being alive.

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

The Girl At The Lion d'Or Ep 1/5

Monday 11 May

10.45-11.00am BBC RADIO 4

The second novel in Sebastian Faulks's trilogy, The Girl At The Lion d'Or, is a bittersweet love story set in a France still reeling from the First World War and gearing up for the Second, in this Woman's Hour drama adaptation.

It is 1936 in Janvilliers and a lonely, beautiful young girl comes to work in a small and unprepossessing provincial hotel. Haunted by something in her past, she appears determined to make a new life for herself. But events both personal and political begin to conspire against her. She falls desperately in love with a much older man – a politician working for the new socialist government. But Charles Hartmann is already married. Meanwhile, the Germans are marching into the Rhineland and, unbelievably, people are beginning to talk again of war.

Adapted by Rachel Wagstaff, the cast includes Julian Rhind–Tutt, Toby Jones, Jessica Raine, David Westhead and Catherine Cusack.

Producer/Frank Stirling

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Britain's Oldest New Mum explores what life has been like for Sue Tollefsen who, last March, at the age of 58, had her first baby.

Producer Dinah Lammiman had exclusive access to Sue and her baby, Freya, for the first year of her daughter's life – watching Freya grow up and discovering how people have reacted to Britain's Oldest New Mum.

There is a loving cocoon of supportive friends and family around Sue and Freya, but when Sue starts to engage with the wider world, she finds not everyone is ready to tolerate a new mother in her late fifties. At her first mother-and-baby group, one of the young mums, who could easily be Sue's daughter, is appalled. She thinks Sue is selfish for having a baby so late.

Just a few months ago, a 70-year-old Indian woman gave birth to her first baby, but Sue thinks 70 is just too old and that there should be a limit.

The menopause used to be nature's cut-off point. The programme asks how wise it is to go against that and have a baby at an age when many people are planning for their retirement.

Sue is full of energy and looks younger than her age but she has struggled with her health since Freya's birth. She had to undergo four major operations in the first few months of Freya's life, although none were directly related to Freya's birth.

Sue and her partner, Nick, who is 11 years younger than her, have made plans which they hope will ensure Freya is looked after in the future. But as Freya's first birthday approaches, Sue finds the realisation that she won't be around for much of her miracle daughter's life almost too much to bear.

Producer/Dinah Lammiman

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Tanya has bolted with her mother's credit card to Jamaica in Bad By Default, a heart-warming comedy by Leah Chillery.

Tanya is looking for her dad, Lawrence – the man her mother said abandoned them – but when she finds him, he's about to marry his sweetheart, Colleen. He's pleased to see her but he's reluctant to give any explanation for his parental absence.

Tanya finds Jamaica hot and bewildering. Her grandmother is loud and hearty and kisses her a lot but gives her no answers. Then she meets a boy called Si who dispenses street wisdom – he's pretty good-looking, too.

Then the truth comes tumbling out. Colleen had been Lawrence's girlfriend, bearing him a child, before he left her for Tanya's mother who, in turn, drove him away.

Bad By Default stars Everal A Walsh and Carla Henry.

Producer/Gary Brown

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Across Britain, some of the worst offending youngsters are being targeted in the hope that early intervention can turn them around before they reach their teenage years.

Winifred Robinson follows a group of nine- to 12-year-olds placed on the Youth Justice Board's inclusion-support programme in Coventry, where activities from fishing to family therapy are aimed at addressing their behaviour.

Many have already been in trouble with the police, others are referred following school exclusions, or because older brothers are involved in crime or because of general concerns about anti-social behaviour.

The Government believes that targeting children close to the age of criminality provides a real opportunity to set them on a better path in life. A 12-year-old boy is in the first stages of this initiative: one of six brothers, he's been in trouble at school and in his community. His parents were initially closed to the idea of such intensive work but now say it's already making an impact. At present there are about 1,000 children across the UK subject to this intensive tracking and a range of interventions are used: from horse-riding to improving home life through parenting classes.

In London, Winifred joins a dedicated police unit tackling gang-related violence: out on the streets the problem is all too apparent but so, too, is the desire to divert younger siblings and to get families involved in doing this. According to Metropolitan Police inspector Stuart Bell, the hopes for change are high if work can be done before these children reach their teenage years: "Everything we're seeing, week in and week out, points to the need for this kind of work. Older gang members are drawing in younger siblings and recruiting in schools so we just can't afford to sit back and do nothing."

Presenter/Winifred Robinson, Producer/Sue Mitchell

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Book At Bedtime – Brooklyn Ep 1/10

Monday 11 May

10.45-11.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Niamh Cusack reads Colm Toibin's masterful novel Brooklyn, a story of duty, love and a girl who crossed the ocean for a new life in New York in the Fifties.

Toibin's latest novel opens in the small town of Enniscorthy in the south east of Ireland in the early Fifties. Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work. Her three brothers have already left to seek their fortunes in England – she and her sister, Rose, and her widowed mother are all that remain at home.

When a priest comes home from America for a holiday he recognises both Eilis's plight and her potential. Almost before she knows it, she is crossing the Atlantic for a job on the shop-floor of a Brooklyn department store, lodging with an Irish landlady and looking forward to a new life.

Twice Booker-listed Toibin captures the immigrant's dislocation and a girl's yearnings. As Eilis struggles to find her feet and begin her new life, the joys of the shiny young country she has come to start to appeal. She takes evening classes, she helps out among the Irish diaspora, she goes to dances and she finds love. When a tragedy calls her home, something of America travels with her.

A love story and an exploration of personal choice and familial duty, Brooklyn is a tender, funny and compassionate portrait of the compromises made by those who take a step into the unknown.

Sally Marmion is the abridger.

Producer/Di Speirs

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Monday 11 May

7.00-10.00pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Mark Saggers presents the day's sports news and is joined by special guests for The Monday Night Club to discuss the latest from the world of football and look ahead to this week's action.

From 8pm, there's commentary of the Tyne-Tees derby and key relegation clash between Newcastle and Middlesbrough, live from St James' Park.

Presenter/Mark Saggers, Producer/Claire Ackling

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Marc Riley's live band in tonight's programme is French/Finnish duo The DΦ (pronounced Dough).

Presenter/Marc Riley, Producer/Michelle Choudhry

BBC 6 Music Publicity

To top

Gideon Coe features George Harrison's groundbreaking Concert For Bangladesh from 1971 which laid the blueprint for Live Aid, 14 years later. The programme also features the Futureheads live from 2006 and session tracks from Lambchop.

Presenter/Gideon Coe, Producer/Mark Sheldon

BBC 6 Music Publicity