Programme Information

Actress, recording artist and BBC Radio 2 presenter Elaine Paige

Elaine Paige is joined by Grammy Award-winning composer David Arnold, who has worked on the scores for a range of film and television projects such as Independence Day, Little Britain, Stargate and, perhaps most famously, the last five James Bond films.

As well as being one of the world's leading composers, David is also a sought-after record producer who, over the years, has worked with the likes of Björk, Kaiser Chiefs, Natasha Bedingfield and, most recently, Dame Shirley Bassey. David chats to Elaine about his Essential Musicals and this week's Big One from Malcolm is from the musical Oliver!.

Presenter/Elaine Paige, Producer/Malcolm Prince

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

To top

Ray Davies from The Kinks and Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders discuss their respective music careers in the Seventies and pick some of their favourite songs from the decade.

The pair have recently recorded a duet, entitled Postcard From London, which is released later this month.

Presenter/Johnnie Walker, Producer/Natasha Costa Correa

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

To top

Musical theatre actress and winner of BBC One's I'd Do Anything, Jodie Prenger, sits in for Paul O'Grady this week.

Presenter/Jodie Prenger, Producer/Malcolm Prince

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

To top

The love of God has inspired more hymns than perhaps any other subject. Brian D'Arcy introduces just a few of them in this week's edition of Sunday Half Hour and explores some of the teachings behind the words.

This week's featured choir is the Cambridge Chorale and hymns include God Is Love Let Heaven Adore Him, Stainer's anthem God So Loved The World and Come Down O Love Divine.

Presenter/Brian D'Arcy, Producer/Janet McLarty

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

French actress Leslie Caron

French actress and former dancer Leslie Caron, whose big break came when she starred with Gene Kelly in An American In Paris, shares her Private Passions with Michael Berkeley this afternoon. She later went on to become one of the most successful Hollywood musical stars of the Fifties.

Caron's acting career continued with films such as The L-Shaped Room, Damage and Chocolat, and she is about to return to the musical stage in Sondheim's A Little Night Music.

Her choices include music from her early dancing years and some of her favourite songs, as well as a Bach cello suite.

Presenter/Michael Berkeley, Producer/Chris Marshall

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

To top

Danny Sapani stars in August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Fences, which forms this afternoon's Drama On 3.

It is 1957 and once-famous baseball player Troy Maxson now works as a garbage collector. The Fifties are yielding to the spirit of liberation of the Sixties. The civil rights movement is kicking in but Troy can't see it. He is a proud, angry, hard-working man embittered by the racial inequality he has had to face all his life.

He is married to Rose with a teenage son, Cory, but secretly he is sleeping with someone else. When Rose discovers that Troy has been unfaithful and his girlfriend is pregnant, the family begins to fall apart.

Danny Sapani stars as Troy Maxson, Adjoa Andoh as Rose and Daniel Anthony as Cory.

Producer/Claire Grove

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

To top

Fourteen centuries ago, an elite band of 300 warriors set out from Edinburgh and marched south to Catraeth, Catterick, in Yorkshire, to meet a force of 10,000 Saxons in a bloody pitched battle.

At the end of a week of ferocious combat, all but three of the 300 lay dead and, with them, the last hope of the Old North – the original Britons – against the Saxon invaders. But the battle left an enduring literary legacy – one of the three survivors, Aneirin, returned to Edinburgh and composed an epic poem, The Gododdin, to commemorate his fallen comrades.

Poet Gwyneth Lewis sets out to explore the origins and meaning of Aneirin's powerful series of elegies for the slain heroes of Catterick. She tells the story of the poem, its poet, the battle, the people who fought it and the world they lived in. With the help of archaeologists and historians, she asks whether the Gododdin can be taken simply as an account of a battle or whether it was really written as propaganda to instil courage in a later generation of Britons.

Presenter/Gwyneth Lewis, Producer/Jeremy Grange

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Retail expert Mary Portas joins Kirsty Young this week to talk about her life, career, favourite music and how she would cope on BBC Radio 4's mythical desert island.

Presenter/Kirsty Young, Producer/Leanne Buckle

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

To top

In his famous poem, Yeats declares he "will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree". Poet Kenneth Steven does exactly that, journeying from the Strand, in London, where Yeats had the idea, to the Lake Isle of Innisfree in Lough Gill, near Sligo, to investigate why this poem strikes a chord with so many people.

Yeats spent many childhood summers on Lough Gill, a large lake with several small islands in County Sligo. Then his family moved to a rather grey area of Kensington, London. One day while he was walking along the Strand, he saw in a shop a fountain with a ball balanced on top of the jet and, somehow, the water transported him imaginatively back to the Lough and the Isle of Innisfree. And so he wrote the short poem which became his best known, somewhat to his chagrin.

The poem is a work of contrasts, opposing the city with the country, crowds with solitude and peace with not war – although the situation in Ireland was tense – but stress and anxiety. As well as demonstrating the poet's early philosophical thinking, there is also a biblical aspect to the language, so this brief lyric is much more than a young man's yearning for a bit of peace and quiet.

In this programme, Kenneth, whose own life and work shares similar concerns, explores all this on his journey from London to the Lake Isle of Innisfree – and talks to Yeats experts, other poets and historians along the way.

Presenter/Kenneth Steven, Producer/Julian May

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

7 Day Sunday

Sunday 10 January

11.00am-12.00noon BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Comedian and The Thick Of It star Chris Addison hosts a brand-new topical show for Sunday mornings on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Fellow comedians Andy Zaltzman, Sarah Millican, plus a special guest, join Chris to pull apart the week's big stories and see what makes them tick.

Presenter/Chris Addison

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

To top

5 Live Sport

Sunday 10 January

12.00noon-6.00pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Mark Chapman brings listeners the latest sports news and an afternoon of live action.

From 12.15pm, there are regular updates of the Scottish Cup fourth-round tie between Hamilton and Rangers and commentary of West Ham United versus Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League, at 1.30pm.

Listeners can also hear updates from Newcastle versus Gloucester in rugby union's Premiership, from 3pm, and live Premier League commentary of Liverpool versus Tottenham from Anfield, at 4pm.

Presenter/Mark Chapman, Producer/Steve Houghton

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

NFL American Football

Sunday 10 January

9.00pm-12.30am BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Listeners can hear live commentary from one of the games in the first week of the NFL play-offs, the "wildcard round". There's also a round-up of all the post-season action.

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

Jon Richardson is joined this week by fellow Edinburgh Comedy Awards nominee Tom Wrigglesworth.

Tom was nominated for his show An Open Return Letter To Richard Branson, a show which explores the true(ish) story of when Tom Wrigglesworth did do the right thing.

Seeing the injustice of a confused old lady being charged £115 simply for being on the wrong train, he organised a whip-round of other passengers and was subsequently arrested for begging.

Presenter/Jon Richardson, Producer/Adam Hudson

BBC 6 Music Publicity

To top

The unique Jarvis Cocker begins his weekly BBC 6 Music show, bringing his eclectic record collection and years of stories from travelling the world making music.

In his own words, "It is my intention to fill these hours with as much dodgy opinion, crackpot theories, hare-brained schemes and beautiful, beautiful music as is humanly possible."

Listeners will fill the gaps in Jarvis's record collection in Is it Any Good and Jarvis will venture in to a weekly world of interesting spoken-word material.

Presenter/Jarvis Cocker, Producer/James Stirling

BBC 6 Music Publicity