Saturday Live

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...

Presented by Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Chris Tarrant has been a household staple since the mid 70s when he shook up Saturday mornings with children's TV series Tiswas. He went on to do Capital Radio breakfast show and was the presenter of ground breaking quiz show Who wants to be a Millionaire, which ran for 15 years, presenting many other programmes along the way. His latest project has been...

Presented by Richard Coles and Suzy Klein. DJ and veteran festival-goer Edith Bowman on her love for the sonic boom of Green Man and Glastonbury. For the past twenty years Edith's taken in two or three festivals a year - and after attending more than 80 of them, seeing 1,500 bands and having two children she explains why her passion is as great as ever. Grammy award winning jazz singer Gregory Por...

Clinical psychologist and broadcaster Professor Tanya Byron joins Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir to talk tales of the clinic, how a family tragedy sparked her interest in psychology and destigmatising vulnerable people. Becoming unexpectedly jobless in 2012 prompted Michelle Thomas to start paying people to tell her their stories. The response was so amazing she's now crowd-funding a book which will...

In the studio with Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles this week is Conchita Wurst winner of Eurovision 2014. Conchita hails from Columbia and is the alter ego of Tom Neuwirth who was born in Austria. When she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014 with her song "Rise Like A Phoenix" she gained international fame - and also became a gay icon to the LGBT community all over the world. Conchita is a Drag Q...

The comedian, writer and presenter Paul Merton joins Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles. A regular fixture on our radios and TVs - from Just a Minute to Have I Got News For You? But it's pure improvisation that he loves - starting with the Comedy Store Players back in 1985, a gig that he still does every Sunday. And he's about to start a UK tour improvising with a group of friends. Vanessa Mann on delti...

Dame Zandra Rhodes is one of Britain's best-known fashion designers, putting London at the forefront of the international fashion scene in the 1970s. Her extensive list of clients has included Princess Diana and Freddie Mercury. Rhodes now lives with her partner, the 94 year old film producer Salah Hassanein and former head of Warner Bros. In 2003 Zandra founded The Fashion and Textile Museum, the...

On the biggest gardening weekend of the year garden designer and tv presenter Diarmuid Gavin joins Aasmah Mir and Suzy Klein to spill the beans on the highs and lows of taking part in the Chelsea Flower Show, the inspiration behind some of his wackier gardens and the excesses of his overnight propulsion to tv heart throb. Also, York based chocolatier Sophie Jewett will be teaching us how to #bbcge...

The actor and singer, Jason Donovan, joins Richard Coles and Suzy Klein. He talks about his life and a career that has seen him move from Neighbours' soapstar to chart pop idol, jungle survivor to Strictly finalist. In musical theatre he's starred as Joseph and Frank N Furter, and now plays Lionel Logue, the speech therapist to a stammering George VI, in a touring production of The King's Speech....

Presenter and health expert, Dr Christian Jessen, joins Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles. Well known for programmes such as ''Embarrassing Bodies' and 'Supersize Vs Superskinny', Dr Christian also works closely with health charities to educate people in health matters. Most important to him is to raise medical awareness amongst hard to reach groups. Actor Hugh Maynard, currently playing the role of Jo...