31/07/2012

Blythe Duff is best known as Jackie Reid in the ITV television series Taggart - she joins Clare English to discuss her latest play Good With People which is on throughout August at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. The play, which is written by David Harrower, takes us on a journey, tracing the paths of personal and political destruction in Helensburgh, west Scotland, once a thriving holiday resort now home to Britain's nuclear defence programme.
At the tender age of 19 Julie Zielinger has already been named one of The Daily Beasts 150 Women Who Shake the World. She has been leading a teenage movement of feminists via her hugely successful blog TheFBomb since she was 17 and now she has a book to match. A Little F'd Up: Why Feminism is Not a Dirty Word articulates a form of feminism that is current, relevant, and rooted in self-expression. Clare discusses some of the issues which concern the movement most today, particularly body image and sex education, and finds out what it means to be a 4th wave feminist.
Norman Barrett left school at age 12 to join his parents' circus and spent a quarter of a century as ringmaster of the legendary Blackpool Tower Circus. Often referred to as the world's greatest ringmaster, at 73 he now tours the country with Scotland's favourite; Zippos Circus. Clare discusses the highs and lows of his career and asks how his female performers' role has changed, if at all, in the last 60 years.