Episode 1

Synopsis

Victoria Coren joins forces with comedian Rufus Hound, artist Grayson Perry and newspaper columnist Julia Hartley-Brewer in challenging conventional wisdom and knee-jerk thinking.

For example, the received wisdom that 'Women look better in men's clothes than women do in women's' is rejected by Grayson Perry on the grounds that he's never been more successful with the ladies than when he's wearing a dress.

In arguing against the belief that 'an artist who doesn't make his own work is a fraud' Julia Hartley-Brewer points out that nobody ever complained that Sir Christopher Wren was never seen up a ladder laying the bricks of St Paul's Cathedral.

And all three guests dismiss the idea that spending 4.4 billion on the Large Hadron Collider is a waste of money - if only on the grounds that it may prove useful for smashing a few political leaders' heads together.

Producer: Brian King.
An Avalon production for BBC Radio 4.