Saturday Live

Griff Rhys Jones joins the Reverend Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir, to share tales about his long association with historic buildings, hosting quizzes in museums, his great Welsh adventures and dressing as a Dame. JP Devlin meets Paul Hendy and his family to find out about their passion for making bespoke pantomimes. Saturday Live listener Polly Wright describes finding a stash of letters between he...

Anne Reid joins Aasmah Mir and the Reverend Richard Coles. After becoming a household name as Coronation Street's Valerie Barlow, Anne's varied career has seen her seducing Daniel Craig in The Mother, and playing Celia in Last Tango in Halifax. Now Anne talks about fulfilling another ambition, by singing in her one women show. JP Devlin meets listener Jayne Moore who set up Greensted Hedgehog Resc...

Crime writer Ian Rankin joined Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Saturday Live hosted a special auction, offering listeners the chance to bid for some amazing prize packages to raise money for BBC Children in Need. LINES ARE NOW CLOSED - PLEASE DO NOT CALL OR TRY TO BID. There was a Just a Minute VIP Experience, a Today Programme VIP Experience, a Saturday Live VIP Experience and The Infinite Monkey C...

Sophie Ellis-Bextor first topped the charts with Groovejet (If This Ain't Love) and successes continued with hits including Murder On The Dancefloor and Take Me Home. Sophie joins Aasmah and Richard to talk about her career, taxidermy and reaching the final on Strictly Come Dancing. Ashley Walters found fame as rapper Asher D in So Solid Crew. He's subsequently carved out a successful acting caree...

Joining Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles is the actor, writer and comedian Steve Coogan. He has won seven comedy awards, six BAFTAs for his work including The Trip and Philomena, and had a box office number one with Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. He discusses his childhood, comedy career and love of cars, including his mum's Morris Minor Traveller. Deborah Alma, emergency poet, turns up in a 1970s ambula...

He rose to fame playing windmill dwelling magician sleuth Jonathan Creek, but it was quite a departure from his roots in the comedy circuit. Alan Davies has since garnered our sympathy as the fall guy to Stephen Fry's genius in TV quiz QI. But all the while he's never stopped the stand up and he joins us mid tour. When she was only 13 years old, Yeonmi Park fled North Korea for a better life. She...

Inspired by Blue Peter at the age of three Gaby Roslin's career has taken her from The Big Breakfast to Chicago and the National Lottery Draw. She joins Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir to talk about her life and career on stage and TV. George Dowell dreamed of playing professional football before a car crash left him paralysed from the chest down. The former defender used to play for Worthing FC but...

Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by Sophie Thompson. The award winning actor has appeared in Harry Potter, EastEnders and won celebrity MasterChef in 2014. Sophie talks about how her family, which includes sister Emma and father Eric, narrator of the Magic Roundabout, inspired her to create a cookbook. Peter Bleksley is one of the experts on Channel 4's TV series Hunted, where the police ar...

He's sold over three million records, has over 2 million twitter followers and has notched up 66 million YouTube views of his work. Rapper Professor Green aka Stephen Manderson has now written his autobiography which details his troubled past, successful present and hopes for the future. He joins us on Saturday Live. Charlie le Mindu is a hair artist. He cuts hair, makes wigs and what he calls 'ha...

Science journalist and self-experimenter Michael Mosley joins Kate Silverton and Suzy Klein. Michael's varied career started in banking and then he qualified as a doctor before joining the BBC. He talks about the Fast Diet, reveals the most terrifying experiment he's undertaken, and why he's now investigating life before birth. In the week that the Queen becomes Britain's longest-serving monarch,...

Richard Coles and Suzy Klein are charmed by Nigel Havers. He shot to fame as Lord Lindsay in the Oscar winning film Chariots of Fire, and is best known for playing charmers, cads and conmen from Coronation Street to Downton Abbey. He describes how he transformed himself into Mick Jagger, and why he's returned to the role of Algernon Moncrieff in The Importance of Being Earnest. A Saturday Live lis...

Long before the actor Larry Lamb achieved notoriety as the evil Archie Mitchell in EastEnders or twinkly Micky Shipman in Gavin & Stacey he'd lived a life dramatic enough to be made into a TV hit of its own. A working class London boy with a troubled dad and a much loved mum Larry blundered into acting more by chance than design. In his early years he filleted fish and worked as an encyclopedi...

The prolific podcaster, comedian, writer and blogger Richard Herring joins Kate Silverton and Richard Coles to tell them why, after an unbroken run of performing a different stand-up show at the Edinburgh festival for the last eleven years, he's not going this year. Instead, he's re-enacting all his festival shows, plus creating a twelfth brand new one, in London. Former soldier Hannah Campbell wa...

Simon Webbe is currently playing the part of the Big Bad Wolf in the Three Little Pigs but is perhaps best known for being a quarter of the boy band Blue. Simon made his theatre debut in Sister Act at the London Palladium and has also been a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing. Simon tells Kate Silverton and Richard Coles about learning discipline and his hopes for breaking Hollywood. Simon is at...

Suzy Klein and Kate Silverton present this week's Saturday Live. He's a stand up comedian who has done musicals, panto, hosted game shows, is a panelist on Just a minute, who won Celebrity big brother, came third on Strictly and has written 3 adult novels. Now Julian Clary has turned his hand to children's fiction. He joins us to talk about his varied career. Listener Jackie Winter got in touch wi...

Comedian and writer Jenny Eclair talks about her latest novel Moving, which taps into her obsession with motherhood and family secrets; whilst taking Jenny back to memories of being a life model and drama student in Manchester. Alan Gardner has won awards for his work and he's now starring in TV series The Autistic Gardener. Alan talks about making the show, his passion for plants and recent Asper...

The tenor Alfie Boe joins Richard Coles and Suzy Klein to talk about his latest project with Pete Townhend's Classic Quadrophenia, and going to Broadway to star as Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. Azi Ahmed grew up in a devout Pakistani family in Manchester and set off for Central Saint Martins in London. Leading a double life she set up an internet company and then, with no military experience, en...

Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by comedian Phill Jupitus. Having carved out a career in stand up, he was the voice that launched BBC 6 Music, spending 5 years presenting Breakfast. He is a regular on a multitude of TV and radio panel shows and was a team captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks for 18 years. He starred in the West End musical Hairspray and more recently toured with the Mel Bro...

Writer and actress Sally Phillips first appeared regularly on our screens in female comedy series Smack the Pony. Roles in Alan Partridge and Bridget Jones soon followed and since then she's carved out a niche as one of the UK's top comedy actors - appearing in Rescue Me, Parents, Skins and Jam and Jerusalem in the UK and Green Wing, Veep and Parents across the pond. On Radio 4 she's Claire in the...

With Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Boris Becker is the only person to have won two Wimbledon titles by the time he was 18. He talks about tennis, his love of Wimbledon, a place he now calls home, and life away from the courts. Lorna Luft discusses her life and relationship with her mother, Judy Garland. Whilst Lorna loves entertaining audiences onstage she reveals there's one song she won't be sin...

The comedian and travel writer, Dom Joly, joins Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles. Best known as the star of Trigger Happy TV, he has written a number of books including The Dark Tourist for which he visited some of the world's most unlikely destinations such as Chernobyl and North Korea. Julia Miles spent 28 years as the wife of a diplomat, living in Libya, Saudi Arabia and Athens, has worked as a soc...

Bestselling author of the Shopaholic series Sophie Kinsella has written her first book for young adults. She joins Aasmah Mir and Suzy Klein on Saturday live to talk about her joy in writing for different audiences, having a film of her book made, and getting into the mind of a teenager. Listener Rob Cain emailed to tell Saturday Live about his volunteer work with 'Luthiers sans Frontiers -UK' (vi...

Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by the American stand-up comic Reginald D Hunter. He talks about growing up in America's Deep South, only being the fourth funniest in his family and how, although having lived in the UK for 17 years, he still gets caught out by our 'common' language. Andre Anderson comes from an estate in North West London with a reputation for gang violence and crime. He t...

The journalist and novelist, Tony Parsons, joins Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Tony was working on the night shift at Gordon's Gin Distillery when he was offered his first job as a journalist on the New Musical Express. When he wasn't hanging out with rock stars he was embedded with the Vice Squad at 27 Savile Row, West End Central, where the roots of his crime character, DC Max Wolfe, first began...

With Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Jon Culshaw talks about making a career out of impressions, with a repertoire of over 350 voices including John Major, Simon Cowell, Ed Miliband and Patrick Moore. Jon also talks about wanting to take on more serious roles, his fascination with astronomy and love of old cars. Jack Andraka is a pioneering teenage scientist who discovered a way to detect some forms...