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RADIO 1 Thursday 10 January 2008 |
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The Zane Lowe Show With Hard-Fi
Monday 7 to Thursday 10 January
7.00-9.00pm BBC RADIO 1
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Hard-Fi, accompanied by Annie Mac, take over the hot seat tonight while Zane Lowe continues his holiday. The four-piece, led by Richard Archer, hails from Staines in Middlesex. The Mercury Music Prize judges praised their 1995 album, Stars Of CCTV, for its "streetwise guitar music". Hard-Fi caused controversy recently with the release of their new album, Once Upon A Time In The West, by refusing to give it any cover art.
BBC Radio 1 has invited a whole host of today's hottest bands and artists, from Dizzee Rascal to Radiohead, to come in to the studio over the next two weeks to keep Zane's seat warm and entertain listeners in their own unique style.
Presenters/Hard-Fi and Annie Mac,
Producer/Philippa Marshfield
BBC Radio 1 Publicity
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| BBC RADIO 2 Thursday 10 January 2008 |
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Bob Harris Country
Thursday 10 January
7.00-8.00pm BBC RADIO 2
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Canadian alt-country band the Great Lake Swimmers join Bob Harris on tonight's show and perform a selection of songs from their latest album. The band's musical style has drawn comparisons with Nick Drake, Gram Parsons and Neil Young.
Presenter/Bob Harris, Producer/Al Booth
BBC Radio 2 Publicity
My Country Jukebox Ep 2/4
Thursday 10 January
11.00-11.30pm BBC RADIO 2
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Dwight Yoakam joins Nick Barraclough and selects the tracks that have most influenced his career in country music, as My Country Jukebox continues.
Famed for his stripped-down approach to traditional honky tonk, and his loyalty to the Bakersfield sound, Dwight is one of the most respected and adventurous artists around.
He discusses his greatest influences with Nick, which include The Beatles and his mentor and idol Buck Owens, the inspiration for his current album, Dwight Sings Buck.
Presenter/Nick Barraclough, Producer/Viv Atkinson
BBC Radio 2 Publicity
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| BBC RADIO 3 Thursday 10 January 2008 |
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Night Waves Landmark re-examines one of British television's most celebrated dramas, Boys From The Blackstuff, in a special programme recorded at the Free Thinking Festival in Liverpool in November 2007.
A panel featuring the drama's writer, Alan Bleasdale, and producer, Michael Wearing, alongside television academic Lez Cooke and Annie Harrison-Baxter, the producer of both Clocking Off and Waterloo Road, looks at the impact of the series on today's television landscape – noting the debt which series such as Our Friends In The North and Clocking Off owe to Boys From The Blackstuff.
Boys From The Blackstuff was first shown on BBC Two 25 years ago in the autumn of 1982. It was a remarkable hit and was repeated on BBC One only a few weeks later, where the audience grew further. Its catchphrases and characters caught the mood of the nation at a time of high unemployment and social unrest, changing for ever the careers of Bleasdale and Wearing as well as establishing actors Bernard Hill, Julie Walters and Michael Angelis in the public eye.
In 2000, the series was placed seventh in a BFI (British Film Institute) poll of the best 100 television programmes of the 20th century.
The panel also considers the possibility of the series being commissioned now, and what chance there is of television having the kind of impact that Blackstuff had in today's fragmented digital landscape.
Bleasdale reveals it was not his intention to make a political drama, but to tell the stories of the people he saw around him in Liverpool at the time, and that much of the material for the final series was written in 1978 – before Margaret Thatcher came to power.
Wearing, who went on to produce Middlemarch, Pride And Prejudice and Our Friends In The North for the BBC, also reveals how much of the final series was re-written and re-imagined during the production as the city of Liverpool itself, in crisis following the Toxteth riots and in the process of massive demolition, became an integral character in the drama.
Producers/Martin Smith and Fiona McLean
BBC Radio 3 Publicity
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| BBC RADIO 4 Thursday 10 January 2008 |
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Crossing Continents – Kurdistan
Thursday 10 January
11.00-11.30am BBC RADIO 4
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The Northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan continues to go its own way. With a functioning parliament, a booming oil economy and a small but well-trained army, Kurdistan is one place in Iraq where hope flourishes.
But, as Kate Clark discovers in this week's Crossing Continents, the region faces formidable challenges. Galloping inflation, endemic corruption and violent attacks by Iraqi Sunni extremists continue to threaten the hard-won stability and progress of the Kurds. At the same time, powerful neighbouring countries including Syria, Iran and Turkey are constant reminders of the fragility of the Kurdish homeland.
Presenter/Kate Clark, Producer/Bill Law
BBC News Publicity
Doonesburyland
Thursday 10 January
11.30am-12.00noon BBC RADIO 4
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US satirist Joe Queenan conducts a rare interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Gary Trudeau, creator, 40 years ago, of the Doonesbury cartoon strip and the characters Mike Doonesbury, BD, Zonker and Duke.
During the course of the interview, Trudeau reveals why he doesn't care too much what readers make of his strip. Seven million collected editions have been sold worldwide, and Trudeau was the first strip cartoonist to receive the Pulitzer Prize.
British contributors to this programme – not all of them fans – include Steve Bell, Quentin Blake and Matthew Parris. The programme also reveals what happened when the Guardian dropped the strip when it launched the new, reduced, Berliner format. Ian Katz, the features editor at the time, reveals that the switchboard was jammed with angry readers, forcing him figuratively to fall on his sword.
Presenter/Joe Queenan, Producer/Miles Warde
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
Material World
Thursday 10 January
4.30-5.00pm BBC RADIO 4
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In the Seventies, archaeologists digging near Hadrian's Wall unearthed the Romans' answer to email – the Vindolanda texts. These 2,000-year-old tablets of wood are the only written evidence to describe everyday life in the Roman army, and include scrawled invitations to the next big feast and requests home for warm underwear.
All other texts from the era were official documents, so these casual notes and letters are an irreplaceable source of information about the life of an average Roman soldier. But two millennia of warping and staining in peat bogs means that many of the texts remain illegible.
Quentin Cooper talks to Melissa Terras from University College London about deciphering the writing, and how a novel use of shadow is bringing the thoughts of these ancient men to light.
Presenter/Quentin Cooper, Producer/Pam Rutherford
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
Down The Line Ep 1/6
Thursday 10 January
6.30-7.00pm BBC RADIO 4
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BBC Radio 4's spoof phone-in show returns with award-winning talk radio DJ Gary Bellamy offering his listeners a unique chance to let off steam about whatever is bothering them this week on the network.
Now in its third series, Down The Line has proved itself to be as thought-provoking, controversial, intelligent, well-informed and funny as the average Radio 4 listener.
Hot topics up for discussion this time around range from "Has the decline in politeness led to the breakdown of British society?" to "Should we ban deep ends in swimming pools?".
Presenter/Gary Bellamy, Producer/Paul Whitehouse
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
Pick Ups Ep 1/6
Thursday 10 January
11.00-11.30pm BBC RADIO 4
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John Thomson, Sally Lindsay, Phil Rowson and Ash Tandon star in Pick Ups, a sharp new series of six half-hour episodes, written by Ian Kershaw, set in a run-down taxi office on the outskirts of Manchester.
Fast-paced and funny, each episode reveals a self-contained tale from the back-seat tippers and dippers of the after-hours city, as well as unravelling a little more of the life stories of the bantering drivers and their long-suffering receptionist, Lind.
Producer/Paul Hardy
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
In Business – Hello, Sunshine!
Thursday 10 January
8.30-9.00pm BBC RADIO 4
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Europe has pledged to get 20 per cent of its energy from non-polluting sources by 2020, but a lot has to be done to achieve that target.
As politicians seek ways of producing sustainable energy, Germany has taken the lead with the world's biggest solar power station and the beginnings of a significant renewable industry. In this week's edition of In Business, Peter Day discovers the secret of Germany's success.
As Britain struggles to go green, in Germany a wave of new enterprises are turning wind and solar power into potent investment opportunities. Much of the activity is bringing much-needed employment to the former East Germany, the region which used to pollute West Germany with its tall smokestacks. As Matthias Machnig, the German Environment Minister responsible for alternative energy, says: "It is a deliberate attempt to generate a whole new industry based on renewables."
Germany has taken a clever approach to sustainability with a policy designed to progressively reduce the cost of wind- and solar-generated power, based on the so-called "feed-in tariff" principle. Under Germany's renewable energy law, electricity suppliers have to buy power generated by solar arrays at a price well above the market price of energy and keep doing so for 20 years. This basic strategy means investors in solar can easily work out their likely revenue flows for 20 years and householders with small solar arrays on their roofs can work out how long it will take to pay off the investment and make money from the deal. In addition, the 20-year price guarantee is reduced year by year, so that latecomers to the investment process know they will make money only if they benefit from lower-priced technology, invented because of the new demand for green power.
Peter travels to Leipzig, in the old Communist East Germany, to visit the biggest solar power station in the world where solar is bringing emigrants back from other parts of the country. He also visits a huge new factory making solar panels in Frankfurt an der Oder, the "other" Frankfurt, close to the Polish border where unemployment stands at 17 per cent.
Peter also asks Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation what Britain has to do to catch up with the German grip on the market and whether we need a price mechanism, too.
Presenter/Peter Day, Producer/Caroline Bayley
BBC News Publicity
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| BBC WORLD SERVICE Thursday 10 January 2008 |
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One Planet – From The Ground Up Ep 1/2
Thursday 10 January
12.30-1.00pm BBC WORLD SERVICE
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Presenter Susie Emmett takes a look at the dire consequences of "dirty soil" for animal and plant life, in this two-part edition of One Planet – From The Ground Up.
"Soils are sensitive," says Susie. "Rivers can be cleaned up in a few years. It takes a lifetime to revitalise a forest. But lose your soil and all its vitality and it will take millennia to regain what can be lost in less than a decade. Why? Because soil is deeply special. But more and more of the world's soils are being pushed to the brink."
Soil scientists, biologists and enthusiasts tell the story of soil, explaining how this thin layer around the planet was formed, how it differs and how it determines what people can grow on it.
Susie travels from the best soil in the world, the Polders, the low-lying fertile young fields of Western Europe, to the worst – the thin, hard-pushed ancient soils of Africa.
She is introduced to giant multi-coloured earthworms, action-hero nematodes with extraordinary powers to boost or blitz crop production. And, with the assistance of powerful electron microscopes, she observes the tiniest of microfauna who all contribute to the soil's magical powers of productivity.
Presenter and Producer/Susie Emmett
BBC World Service Publicity
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