Saturday Live

Joining Adrian Chiles this week on the programme are: Nick Park, filmmaker, animator and author will be talking about his latest book about the life of Gromit - the beloved character from the adventures of Wallace & Gromit. Next Wednesday will mark sixty years since the disaster at the Welsh village of Aberfan. On 21 October 1966 a mountain of coal waste slid down into a school and houses resu...

Adrian Chiles is joined by three guests who have made a success in business, music and broadcasting. The musician Tinie Tempah has in recent years flexed his talents across the industries of fashion and property. But music remains at the top of his priorities with a new album - The Night's Not Dead - and a UK/European tour, more than sixteen years since finding global success in the industry. Entr...

Adrian Chiles is in the company of a talented trio on today's programme: Charlie Higson, writer, actor and comedian has enjoyed great success in television, not least with The Fast Show. And as a novelist the writer of the much admired young James Bond series has now published his first work featuring the grown up 007. Billy Monger holds the world record at Ironman as a double amputee, this after...

When it comes to bringing history to life on television Lucy Worsley is queen of the realm; she’s written a personal history of the Queens and Kings whose lives she’s almost lived through her work. Clare Balding’s one of the most respected and well-loved broadcasters in the business, bringing the biggest sporting and ceremonial events into our homes, as well as writing a series of best selling boo...

On the programme this week are Caitlin Moran, Eric Idle and Rob Brydon. Caitlin’s here to talk about - how to be hopeful in a world gone mad. For more than half a century Eric Idle’s refuge from the mad world of comedy, music, film and fame has been a little place in Provence. And his latest book is a love letter to it. And Rob Brydon is in a happy place having found hope, peace and contentment in...

Adrian Chiles presents Radio 4's Saturday morning programme full of remarkable people with extraordinary stories. Academically we’re in very good shape today. Dr Kevin Fong has degrees in medicine, astrophysics, aerospace engineering and he’s a fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists. Kevin has spent his working life in high-risk, high-performance teams and he's written a new book called Minu...

Adrian Chiles presents Radio 4's Saturday Morning programme: Alan Cumming has always had a lot going on, in theatre, in Hollywood, as presenter now of one of the biggest shows in television. And yet he stays close to his Perthshire roots as Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s artistic director. In search of Mel Giedroych’s roots, we travel south to Leatherhead in Surrey where her new novel is set. Like A...

Today we’re in the company of three luminously talented people who’ve survived seriously dark periods to shine brightly in their fields. More than thirty years after Irvine Welsh’s debut novel caused a sensation, he tell us how Trainspotting The Musical was a natural next step. Alan Davies’ career has been going strong for more than thirty years too. There's a lot going on in his new memoir - the...

Joining Adrian this week on Saturday Live, BBC Radio treasure and bestselling author Sara Cox. She just taken over BBC Radio 2's breakfast show but has found the time to write a brand new novel, 'The Truth of Us' that is published on the 16th July. We have the Booker Prize Winning Author and poet Ben Okri, he is a giant amongst writers, a master storyteller with a fascinating life story of his own...

Joining Adrian Chiles on this week's programme is Mark Foster, for a good while the fastest swimmer on the planet. We have author and psychologist Katriona O’Sullivan, a woman raised in poverty in Coventry, who went on to get a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. And the remarkably gifted Ralf Little, who we know as an actor but might equally have been a doctor or a footballer. Plus the Inheritance...

Adrian Chiles presents Radio 4's Saturday morning programme. On today's programme: Paul Merton’s been at the top of his game for BBC One's Have I Got News for You and a familiar voice here on BBC Radio 4’s Just A Minute. He is about to take his Improv show with his wife Suki Webster to the Edinburgh Fringe this August. They’ll also be taking the show back to The Comedy Store in London from Novembe...

Joining Adrian Chiles on this week's programme is Professor of social history, a writer with a first class degree from Cambridge and a TV legend with a masters from Oxford. Ruby Wax is as well known now for her work in mental health, but she’s been looking back at some of her biggest interviews to see what she can learn about herself as well as her subjects. Professor Carl Chinn is a social histor...

Three great guests on the show, as per normal. One of them’s all about the paranormal, one is a legendary entrepreneur, and a lifelong journalist whose greatest story turned up in her own family. Danny Robins is a man with an uncanny ability to explore the supernatural in a way which delights sceptics and believers alike. Sharon Ring worked on Fleet Street in newspapers and magazines for more than...

Adrian Chiles is joined by three hugely successful guests - all shining stars in their fields. Victoria Pendleton won it all as a track cyclist, a quite astounding athlete who dug so deep, physically and mentally, in her career, and also in navigating her life after cycling. Cressida Cowell is the writer and illustrator behind - amongst other things - the incredibly successful How to Train your Dr...

Adrian Chiles with a pop star, a comedian and a writer, but there’s a lot more to each of them than that. Tom Fletcher was starring on the West End stage at the age of 10. 30 years later he’s been back there writing the music for Paddington - The Musical. In between he’s squeezed in popstardom with the hugely successful band McFly. Bethany Handley grew up loving life in the great outdoors of Monmo...

Martha Kearney is a titan of news and political broadcasting who these days takes a more relaxed approach to her work, swapping the campaign trail for a nature trail. Matt Haig can do it all, fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books - and we’re all aboard for his latest novel the Midnight Train - but it's Winnie the Pooh that Ian Fletcher, Earl Grantham, Mr Brown…are but some of the much loved c...

Adrian Chiles presents Radio 4's Saturday morning show. Our wonderful guests today include JJ Chalmers, who has been a design-technology teacher, Royal Marine and Invictus games medallist. He is now a regular presenter on Television and Radio. We also have with us a legend of the food and restaurant world, Ruth Rogers. And a couple of podcasting Dads - Matthew Carter and Lawrence Price - who’ve go...

On today's programme, Adrian Chiles is with Steve Backshall. The adventurer and naturalist has captivated all of us with his work, but especially children - millions of them - who he’s led wide-eyed into the natural world. Frank Cottrell-Boyce is blessed with a similar gift for capturing the imagination of children, as well as grownups. The esteemed screenwriter is presently the Children’s Laureat...

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall found his calling in the countryside of Gloucestershire and Devon to become a cook on the wild side championing seasonal and sustainable ingredients. Lucy Shepherd is our explorer who has navigated her way from the safety of the Suffolk countryside to the amazon and arctic, including the Cardiff studio. And Jonathan Shalit, who began writing music reviews at school and...

On today's programme, Adrian is joined with a poet, an actor and a woman who has been through a military coup in the 1960s. Joseph Coelho the poet was raised in a tower block in Roehampton. He wrote his way into the role of children’s laureate and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Lesley Nicol, the actress, grew up in Irlam, Greater Manchester and ended up in Downtown Abbey. Some journey...

John Robins is a critically-acclaimed comic with awards a-plenty, and now a blistering memoir "Thirst; worked around Twelve Drinks That Changed My Life. Arit Anderson of Gardeners’ World is on her way to the centre of the gardening world, the Chelsea Flower Show, where she’s creating a special space for those with Parkinson's. Starting with a distressed raccoon she found in a bloke’s garage, Linds...

“Prankster” hardly does Dom Joly justice. He’s been a diplomat, a linguist, a traveller, a broadcaster, a writer and lots more besides. Walter Iuzzolino is the "Walter" behind Channel 4’s Walter Presents series. A man who probably watches more TV from more countries than anyone else on the planet. Dr Jaqueline Stroud, Professor of Soil Science at Warwick University, likes nothing better than eaves...

Today an adventurer, a chef and a composer. From special forces to chief scout Bear Grylls likes a challenge, his latest being nothing less than a successful re-write of the story of Jesus. Our chef is Chris Roberts, aka Flamebaster, whose key ingredients are food, fire and frightening levels of enthusiasm. And our composer is Liz Lane, the sometime child prodigy, who found her gift for compositio...

Radio 4's Saturday morning show brings you extraordinary stories and remarkable people.

Adrian spends the hour in the company of renowned TV producer John Lloyd, the modest genius mind behind such national institutions as Spitting Image, QI and Blackadder. Also on the porgramme, Kala Subbuswamy who saw no reason why a middle-aged woman couldn't start a punk band, so did just that. And Jazz Turner didn't let her disability stop her sailing solo around the British Isles, and now she pl...