Saturday Live

Felicity Kendal made her stage debut as a baby. Over 70 years later she’s preparing to appear in her first musical, Anything Goes. She talks to Nikki Bedi and Suzy Klein about her career, including the impact of playing Barbara in The Good Life. Sarah Bickers grew up in a welcoming but messy home, and, living with ADHD, has learnt how to to create order out of chaos. She shares her experiences to...

Johnny Flynn is in the rare position and being both an acclaimed musician and a successful actor who is breaking into the A-list both here and in America. He recently starred as David Bowie in the biopic Stardust and Mr Knightly in a big-screen adaptation of Emma and has just released an album he made during lockdown with writer Robert MacFarlane; Lost in the Cedarwood. He joins Nikki Bedi and Ric...

Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles are joined by iconic Beninese singer songwriter Angelique Kidjo. Whilst known for her energetic world music style she has also collaborated with Philip Glass, covered Talking Heads, played to a jubilant crowd at the BBC Proms and worked as an advocate for the rights and education of women. Growing up in Afghanistan in the 80s, Waheed Arian had to flee the war aged 5. H...

Big Zuu joins Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles. The rapper started teaching himself to cook when he was 9 and is now combining a career in music with his passion for food. Listener Shobha Edgell is a former barrister who, after retirement, took up walking football, as well as being an extra in television and film. Hamish de Bretton Gordon is a chemical weapons expert who also has a heart condition cal...

Sara Cox has been entertaining the nation for 25 years, first through Channel 4 and MTV, then as host of Breakfast on BBC Radio 1 and now drive time on Radio 2. She joins Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles to discuss her latest project, TV book club Under the Covers. Ben Dunne’s teenage son River died in a tragic road traffic accident in Sweden alongside his fellow bandmates from Viola Beach and their m...

Award winning comedian and actor Omid Djalili joins us to talk about his route to fame, taking part in Splash, quiz show catchphrases, performing in Persian for the first time recently and getting back on stage after lockdown. In 1974, aged 17, Debbie Gayle travelled to the Soviet Union to train at the Kirov school of ballet. It was the height of the Cold war, and she found the experience thorough...

Russell Tovey joins Nikki Bedi and Shaun Keaveny. The actor shares how his childhood passion for cartoons and collecting developed into a life changing love of art. Monica Korpal talks about why she retrained to become a nurse. Having been a hospital patient since childhood, due to a rare blood condition, she now works for the Haematology Unit where she was a patient. Alex George entertained milli...

Chef Raymond Blanc began to write a recipe book at the beginning of 2020 inspired by the fast and simple cooking of French scientist Edouard de Pomaine and by his mother. He had no idea the world was about to change. A few months later, Raymond was self-isolating when he found that his mother had died in France and then he was hospitalised with Covid for a month over Christmas and into January. He...

Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles are joined by Andi Oliver whose first career was as vocalist and performer in the band Rip Rig + Panic with her brother Sean and Neneh Cherry, amongst others. She then explored her passion for food and had a cookery show, more recently she became a judge on The Great British Menu and this year is hosting the show for the first time. Joe Marler plays rugby union for Har...

Tim Burgess joins Richard Coles and Nikki Bedi. The Charlatans frontman talks music, meditation and how his lockdown Twitter listening parties have become more successful than he could have imagined. Natasha Coates developed severe allergies when she was 18. She threw herself into gymnastics and won 22 British titles and 38 British medals. Natasha talks about living with her condition and what spo...

Ben Fogle became famous over twenty years ago when he spent a year living on a Scottish Island for early reality TV programme Castaway. It was the springboard for remarkable career involving television presenting, publishing ten books, climbing Everest, swimming with crocodiles, saving elephants, walking to the South Pole and rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. He tells Richard Coles and Nikki Bedi...

Nikki Bedi and Rev Richard Coles are joined by Mel Giedroyc, one half of Mel and Sue who shot to fame hosting Light Lunch, and then warmed our hearts and made us drool with the comforting TV cooking competition programme Great British Bake Off. Since Mel has acted, presented, podcasted about quilting, and she’s written her first novel. Stuart Lawrence’s life was thrown into disarray aged 17 when h...

Liz Pichon talks to Richard Coles and Nikki Bedi about celebrating 10 years since her first Tom Gates book came out, ways she coped with undiagnosed dyslexia, doodling, and why, when she was growing up, her dad may have had the best job. Chris Bavin was a market trader turned grocer whose career took an unexpected turn when he was invited to be a TV presenter. He explains why his latest job has ta...

Composer, musician and producer Nitin Sawhney has just released his 11th studio album ‘Immigrants’ and has scored over 50 films and televisions programmes. He joins Suzy Klein and Nikki Bedi to discuss his life, his multi-award-winning music and how he manages to work across the worlds of music, film, video games, dance and theatre. Jeanne Socrates is a retired maths lecturer who battled through c...

Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles are joined by Ray Mears - an authority on bushcraft and survival, he's been presenting TV series and teaching on the subject for 3 decades. Jono Lancaster has a rare genetic condition called Treacher Collins Syndrome and was adopted at birth. He has made TV programmes, set up a charity and travelled extensively supporting other young people with facial difference. He d...

Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles are joined by singer Louise Redknapp who found fame in Eternal after being spotted in a nightclub aged 15. She went on to have a successful career as a solo artist, with 3 top ten albums, on stage in 9 to 5, and was also a Strictly finalist. Louise talks about growing up in the public eye, success, struggles and lessons she’d like to share. Para-powerlifter Ali Jawad b...

Gareth Thomas was 20 when he made his international rugby union debut for Wales in 1995. He went on to win 100 international caps for Wales, captaining them as well as the British and Irish Lions. Gareth announced publicly he was gay in 2009 and retired from rugby in 2011. In 2019, Gareth spoke openly about living with HIV and his new book Stronger documents the impact of his diagnosis and the ens...

Niki Bedi and Richard Coles are joined by Sophie Ellis Bextor. Having started in the music business aged 16 in indie band theaudience, she went on to have a hugely successful solo dance pop career with hits like Groovejet and Murder on the Dancefloor. Most recently seen singing in her kitchen every fortnight in her online Kitchen Disco. After taking calls from lonely farmers as a volunteer for the...

Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles are joined by Classic BRIT award winner Jess Gillam. At 22 Jess has released 2 albums, performed at the Last Night of the Proms and became the youngest ever presenter for BBC Radio 3. Jess talks about growing up in Ulverston in Cumbria, realising childhood ambitions and using music to spread joy. Drew Pritchard is the star of TV’s Salvage Hunters. He shares his passion...

Chi-chi Nwanoku is a double bass player and founder of Europe's first professional majority black and minority ethnic orchestra, Chineke!. Chi-chi is the eldest of five children, born to a Nigerian father and an Irish mother. Early on, she discovered two competing passions: playing the piano and 100 metre sprinting. She explains to Nikki to Richard how at 5ft tall, she has managed to find success...

Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles are joined by award winning comedian, presenter and writer Russell Kane. He's been the host of three series of Live At The Electric, appearanced on Live At Apollo, Unzipped, Celebrity Juice, I Am Celebrity Get Me Out of Here Now and the host of podcast Boys Don't Cry and Radio 4 series Evil Genius, we talk to him about how he got there. Listener Viv Bird accidentally j...

Queen of Shops Mary Portas has carved out a role as a retail fixer, style guru and successful broadcaster. She joins Richard and Nikki to discuss her extraordinary career and a new season of On Style, a four-part series on Radio 4 exploring what style means to us and the way we live today. Actor Adrian Dunbar grew up in Northern Ireland and moved to London as a young man to train as an actor in Lo...

Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles are joined by Comedian Ed Byrne. He went from youthful horticultural dreams to stand up star and has toured every other year since the late 90s – so what’s he done in lockdown? Some walking, some woodwork and a cookery show... he join us. We also have writer and poet Penny Pepper who is also a wheelchair-user who defied doctors' diagnoses and got inspired by the Sex Pi...

Labour peer Baroness Joan Bakewell has been a television presenter for over fifty years, most recently fronting Landscape Artist of the Year which returned to our screen this week. She joins Richard and Nikki to explain why she has taken up watercolours in lockdown. Marc Hamer was homeless and worked on the railways before enrolling in art college. After discovering a creative outlet in gardening,...

Richard Coles and Nikki Bedi are joined by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage. Writing for three decades, his first published poem was in 1987 whilst he was working in his day job as a probation officer, a job he followed his father into. A geography graduate who is still based in his home county of Yorkshire, how did he end up a member of the Royal household? Vick Hope is a TV and radio presenter known...