Programme Information

Former Take That member and singer-songwriter Robbie Williams

Singer-songwriter Robbie Williams joins Ken Bruce for a live session from BBC Broadcasting House in central London. Robbie performs a selection of songs from his recently released album, Reality Killed The Video Star, along with some old favourites.

Presenter/Ken Bruce, Producer/Gary Bones

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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This week's show has a Latin-American twist as Desmond Carrington celebrates the 99th birthday (on 7 December 2009) of musician, vocalist, arranger and bandleader Edmundo Ros.

Presenter/Desmond Carrington, Producer/Dave Aylott

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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Monty Python's Wonderful World Of Sound Ep 1/2

Tuesday 8 December

10.30-11.30pm BBC RADIO 2

Mighty Boosh duo Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding

Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt from The Mighty Boosh meet Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam from Monty Python in this two-part series telling the story of their classic comedy albums.

In the days before video recorders were commonplace, fans could only enjoy the aural side of Python on repeat. Sketches like Dead Parrot, Nudge Nudge and the Lumberjack Song became regarded as classics on account of the LPs, not the TV show. It was the albums that eventually broke the Pythons in America.

The Python team talk about making the world's first "three-sided" LP; upsetting John Denver; giving farming in the Middle Ages its groove back; and raising the bar for what comedy albums could achieve: all from a garden shed in Finchley.

The series also features interviews with Python songwriter Neil Innes; record producers Andre Jacquemin and Alan Bailey; and composers Dave Howman and John Du Prez.

Presenters/Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, Producer/Simon Barnard

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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Ray Benson, the founder and lead singer of the Grammy Award-winning band Asleep At The Wheel, presents the conclusion of this series which charts the history and development of western swing music.

In the final programme, Ray remembers Bob Wills's last recording session and his own near meeting with his musical idol. He also traces the Seventies western swing revival, which was kick-started by Merle Haggard's album, A Tribute To The Best Damn Fiddle Player In The World, in 1970. The album was a huge influence on Ray himself, and moved the musical direction of his band towards western swing.

Asleep At The Wheel went on to record two tribute albums to Bob Wills and are now regarded as the world's leading western swing band, with a history spanning almost 40 years.

The programme also looks at contemporary artists who are performing and recording their own style of western swing music, such as Lyle Lovett, Hot Club Of Cowtown, Cornell Hurd and Willie Nelson, whose album, Willie And The Wheel, was produced by Ray earlier this year.

The series features contributions from Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett and The Hot Club Of Cowtown, plus former members of Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys – Johnny Gimble, Herb Remington, Bobby Koefer, Louise Rowe and Leon Rausch.

Presenter/Ray Benson, Producer/Al Booth

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

One of North America's great orchestras, the Minnesota, begins an exclusive series of performances on BBC Radio 3 in the first of two concerts on consecutive nights (see also Performance On 3 on Wednesday 9 December on BBC Radio 3 at 7pm). Tonight's programme opens with a new work, Minea, by Kalevi Aho, a favourite composer of the orchestra's music director, Osmo Vänskä.

There is a strong Finnish flavour to the concert – both Aho and Vänskä were born there, as was early 19th-century composer and clarinettist Bernhard Henrik Crusell, whose Clarinet Concerto No. 2 is performed by the star principal clarinet of the Minnesota Orchestra, Burt Hara.

Two orchestral works, forged from operas by their composers, complete the programme. Stravinsky's Song Of The Nightingale is a symphonic poem with music from his opera based on a fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen, while in Richard Strauss's Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, the composer reworked some of the best tunes from his comic opera, suffused with lush romanticism and the Viennese Waltz.

Presenter/Petroc Trelawny, Producer/Brian Jackson

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Dr Warren Hern is a controversial American abortion doctor. He runs the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado and takes a very public stand on the issue. He's one of a handful of doctors in the States who carry out late-term abortions – sometimes as late as 34 weeks.

He's been shot at through the windows of his clinic, had armed US Marshalls outside his door and has been subjected to numerous death threats over the past 30 years. He sleeps with a rifle by his bed and worries about travelling to and from work.

Earlier this summer, his close friend and colleague Dr George Tiller, who also carried out late abortions, was shot dead while handing out books in his church in Kansas. Hern believes he will be next.

In this episode of The Choice, presenter Michael Buerk asks why Hern became involved in such controversial and dangerous work and why he chooses to continue his work, despite death threats.

Presenter/Michael Buerk, Producer/Amanda Hancox

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Benjamin Zephaniah examines why Jamaican patois is the slang of choice for British teenagers and asks what is to be gained, if anything, from its use.

In 2007, Manchester Academy banned the use of street slang from its classrooms and reported soaring exam results the following year.

Meeting teachers and pupils, this programme hears how the ban works and how it affects the children in and outside of school. Benjamin also travels to London, where linguists have been charting the emergence of a new kind of speech pattern called "multi-cultural London-English". It is not merely a new lexicon, it's a dialect based largely on African-Caribbean rhythms.

Most linguists agree the key to using street slang is "appropriacy" – the ability to turn slang on and off. The programme asks why young people today are less able to discern this ability than they were 20 years ago and questions whether banning slang is the answer or if, as some experts suggest, parents and teachers should try to learn it.

Contributors include: linguist Tony Thorne; MP Ann Widdecombe; BBC 1Xtra DJ Ras Kwame; and Professor Paul Kerswill from Lancaster University.

Presenter/Benjamin Zephaniah, Producer/Joby Waldman

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Janet Ellis – host of hit Eighties children's BBC series Jigsaw – presents a celebration of the history and art of the jigsaw puzzle.

More art has probably made its way into more homes via the jigsaw puzzle than almost any other medium, and while it has since become the purveyor of comforting landscapes to the masses, it started life as an educational tool championed by the likes of philosopher John Locke.

In 1760, London map-maker John Spilsbury mounted one of his maps on hardboard and cut it into pieces to help children learn geography.

Going To Pieces In The Box tells the story of how, since then, jigsaws have become a core feature of childhoods across the world.

The programme hears how jigsaws hit their first major peak in the Great Depression, when 10 million a week were sold to families looking for cheap pastimes; how they were used by immigration officers on Ellis Island to determine mental capacity; and the story behind the £1m prize puzzle, Eternity.

Presenter/Janet Ellis, Producer/Geoff Bird

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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This drama is based around one extraordinary afternoon in the life of a Scottish poet, Andrew Younger, who takes a year-long tenure as writer-in-residence at a university in the American Midwest.

Back home in Scotland, Andrew left a difficult relationship with Lorna – with whom he's desperately in love but who won't, or can't, commit to him.

It is mid-winter in the prairie, the temperature has dropped to -22 degrees, a storm is approaching and the university has been closed. Andrew has been advised to go home but he's Scottish and isn't unduly troubled by the prospect of a bit of snow. Besides, he's waiting for a phone call from Lorna, who is due to give her decision on whether she'll take a sabbatical and join him in Iowa or, instead, take a temporary teaching job and stay in Scotland. The phone refuses to ring, though; its silence mocks his hopes and loneliness.

Striding out into the quad – it's only an eight-minute walk to the bus stop – Andrew becomes immediately lost in the blizzard, floundering amidst the world of academia as well as the rapidly accumulating snowdrifts. Just as he slumps defeated into the snow, he is rescued by the Literature Department's cleaner, a Native American woman whose traditional knowledge prove superior to the teachings of academia.

John Gordon Sinclair plays Andrew and Maureen Beattie plays Lorna in a cast that also includes Wendy Seager and Melody Grove.

Producer/Kirsteen Cameron

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Defining Moments Ep 1/3

Tuesday 8 to Thursday 10 December

3.30-3.45pm BBC RADIO 4

Colin Carberry, Anne Harris and Hugo Kelly, three talented, new writers from Ireland, pinpoint pivotal moments in relationships where paths can change forever in this new, three-part series.

Tuesday's story, The Lost Weekend, written by Hugo Kelly and read by Katherine Parkinson, tells the tale of a single woman who grabs the chance to escape for a while, only to find reality waiting on her return.

Wednesday's story, The Westlink Upgrade, written by Colin Carberry and read by Ciarnan McMenamin, is about a young couple who realise they have fallen in love.

Art, written by Anne Harris and read by Jemma Redgrave, tells the story of a woman who meets her lover in Italy.

Readers/Katherine Parkinson, Ciaran McMenamin and Jemma Redgrave, Producers/Gemma McMullan and Heather Larmour

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Great Lives Ep 1/9

Tuesday 8 December

4.30-4.55pm BBC RADIO 4

Famed British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes

Matthew Parris returns with a new series of BBC Radio 4's acclaimed biographical strand, in which he asks well-known people to talk about their heroes.

Explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes selects King Henry V as his hero, in the first programme. Historian Juliet Barker joins Matthew to try to separate fact from myth.

Presenter/Matthew Parris, Producer/Beth O'Dea

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Sneakiepeeks Ep 1/6

Tuesday 8 December

6.30-7.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Three surveillance operatives are on an unspecified job, working for an unspecified employer. Together, they are Beagle Team.

Good surveillance operatives have patience, alertness and discretion – this is a series about the other type of surveillance operatives.

Bill, career snoop and technical specialist, has long carried a torch for beautiful yet disconnected fieldworker Sharla, who doesn't know he exists, despite sharing the back of a van with him for most of their working life. Mark, an enthusiastic, wily, slightly criminal trainee, has been assigned to them by their unknown employer, who goes by the codename of "Huntsman".

Each episode introduces fresh targets, situations and locations. The objects of the team's surveillance are guaranteed to stretch their improvisational skills. However, the team still finds time to indulge in the usual round of office politics; bitching, backstabbing and scapegoating, usually directed at whichever member is out in the field with the microphones.

Producer/Katie Tyrell

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Tuesday 8 December

7.00-10.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Mark Pougatch

Mark Pougatch presents all the day's sports news and live Champions League group-stage coverage of Wolfsburg versus Manchester United and Chelsea versus Apoel FC, plus updates from the night's Championship games.

Presenter/Mark Pougatch

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

5 Live Football League

Tuesday 8 December

7.30-9.45pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra brings live commentary from one of the night's top matches in the Championship, plus reports and score updates from across the Football League.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

Shazia's work is affecting her marriage, as the drama continues. Hassan, meanwhile, understands that she can't change her life for him, but Shazia wonders if that is exactly what she needs...

Later, Jodie and Sway head to the studio together, ready to tell Kuljit about their relationship. But where is he?

Later, Kuljit tells Arun that Jodie and Sway seem worried about him finding something out. He is determined to discover the truth...

Shazia is played by Shobu Kapoor, Hassan by Youssef Kerkour, Jodie by Vineeta Rishi, Sway by Nicholas Bailey, Kuljit by Sartaj Garewal and Arun by Naithan Ariane.

BBC Asian Network Publicity