Saturday Live

Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by vocal coach, singer and television presenter, Carrie Grant. Best known for her role as the vocal coach on the hit talent show, Fame Academy, she has also worked on Pop Idol and The One Show, where she conducted 500 viewers in the life-affirming "virtual choir". Rebecca Root explains how she helps transsexual and transgendered people, like herself, to disc...

Ade Adepitan - the Paralympian, actor and TV presenter - joins Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles. As does magician Megan Knowles-Bacon, the first ever female secretary of the Magic Circle, and ghost-writer of resignation letters Matt Potter. JP Devlin wants your stories of resignations, sackings and grand exits (email saturdaylive@bbc.co.uk ). BBC Radio 1 presenter Gemma Cairney goes chess boxing. And...

Mezzo-Soprano Katherine Jenkins 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. Jonathan Agnew described the Test Match Special package; Felicity Finch aka Ruth Archer talked about the VIP Archers experie...

The comedian Shappi Khorsandi joins Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles to talk new shows, shyness and single motherhood. Emmanuel Jal shares his story and some of his music. At just six years old he was recruited to fight in Sudan's civil war and lost more than five years to the conflict. Now the self-described 'peace soldier' says his only weapon is music. Lutz Pfannenstiel is the only person to have p...

Actor Tom Hollander joins Suzy Klein and Jay Rayner to talk Rev, Dylan Thomas and his attempts at DIY. JP Devlin raises a pint to Dylan Thomas on the centenary of his birth at one of Thomas's old London drinking haunts. Carole Stone has been described as Britain's most connected woman. She reveals her networking secrets and tells us why she doesn't make her connections through social media. He may...

Presented by Suzy Klein and Richard Coles. International rock star Bryan Adams talks about his career as a photographer with the likes of his musical hero Ray Charles and his latest project with wounded soldiers. Change and transformation, too, for Lee Spencer. An Afghanistan and Iraq veteran, he describes how he lost a leg - not on the battlefield but while being a good Samaritan on a British mot...

Alison Lapper joins Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles. For two years a 12 foot statue of her naked and pregnant body was on display in Trafalgar Square in London and since 2000 - the year her son was born - she has been followed by the BBC TV series 'Child of Our Time'. Despite being born with no arms she is a professional artist. Martha Collison, the Great British Bake Off's youngest ever contestant,...

Presented by Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Kanya King MBE is the founder and CEO of the MOBO Awards, Europe's leading urban music brand, which has played a major role in bringing black music and culture to the mainstream. Now in its 19th year, it reaches in excess of 400 million viewers. Kanya reveals how she started it from a makeshift office in her bedroom, and by re-mortgaging her home. George...

Actor and songwriter Gary Kemp joins Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles to talk about 'Soul Boys of the Western World', a film documenting the rise, fall and return of 80's band Spandau Ballet. Hilary Bradt is the founder of the Bradt travel guides. To mark 40 years in the business she shares some of her more irresponsible travel stories. Jimmy G is one of Russia's biggest pop stars but unheard of anywh...

Richard Coles and Suzy Klein and a live audience at the 2014 Abergavenny Food Festival, with doyenne of the wine world Jancis Robinson, Jay Rayner from Radio 4's Kitchen Cabinet, tree hunter Rob McBride and beekeeper Scott Davies who gave world leaders a taste of honey at the recent NATO summit in Newport. The Today programme's John Humphrys tucks into some Welsh treats with JP Devlin, BBC Introdu...

Presented by Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir is at the Invictus Games. The award winning crime writer Val McDermid has written 28 novels, selling more than 10 million copies worldwide. She joins Richard to talk about her passion for football, her musical aspirations and where she finds inspiration for her novels. Former Royal Marine and medallist Andy Grant lost his right leg in Afghanistan in 2009....

Impressionist and actor Alistair McGowan joins Aasmah Mir and Suzy Klein to talk sporting passions, finding your roots and the joys of Noel Coward. Also joining us is Katy U'ren, a PE teacher from Glasgow. She discusses what it was like to teach children in Bangladesh how to swim as part of UNICEF's SwimSafe campaign, and what she's doing back home to transform the lives of the children she teache...

Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir are joined by the columnist Katharine Whitehorn, the writer Nina Stibbe, and Nikki King, Honorary Chairman of Isuzu Truck UK, who shares her stories of doing business in Japan. Louise Johncox describes how her baker father inspired her love of the sound of a whisk. Nigel Brazier on four generations of his family business and traditional Black Country recipes. Stephen E...

Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir are joined by Radio 1 DJ Gemma Cairney, former engineer Sam King from Jamaica, who served with the RAF during the Second World War. Now 88 years-old he talks to Saturday Live about his life, legacy and the Notting Hill Carnival. Annabel Tellis Tunley emigrated with her family to Australia in 2004 and is running a project where she calls a Facebook friend, old or new ev...

Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by the award-winning singer and composer Laura Mvula, poet Josephine Dickinson who has just regained her hearing after being deaf since she was six, and 'Educating Yorkshire' English teacher Matthew Burton. Plus Carl-Magnus Helgegren who took his two sons, aged ten and eleven, to visit a war zone after they asked to play the computer game 'Call of Duty', Cli...

Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir are joined by the writer and comedian Katy Brand, author Harry Bucknall who followed all 1,411 miles of the Via Francigena Pilgrims walk from the City of London through England, France, Switzerland and Italy to Rome, and actor Daniel Laurie who's become the first student with Downs Syndrome to be accepted to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Theatre School S...

Richard Coles and Suzy Klein are joined by the actress and writer Maureen Lipman, artist John Dolan who was saved from homelessness by his dog George, and Alison Trim who received a memorable musical 50th birthday present. John McCarthy meets Level 42's Mark King and his mother Bridget on the Isle of Wight, twins Billy and Bob Seago explain how passing and failing the 11 plus affected their relati...

Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles with a programme from Glasgow to celebrate the Commonwealth Games. They are joined by record-breaking long-distance Scottish cyclist, adventurer, broadcaster and Queens Baton bearer Mark Beaumont. Sir Professor Geoff Palmer came to Britain from Jamaica aged 14. Described as educationally sub-normal is he now an expert in cereals and Professor Emeritus of brewing at Her...

Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir are joined by Lord Sugar's longstanding Apprentice advisor Nick Hewer, PhD student Hannah Earnshaw who's on the shortlist for a one-way ticket to Mars, and Lois Pryce who rode her motorcycle three thousand miles around Iran on her own. British Empire Medal winner Annie Chapman describes how she's raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for cancer research astride her tr...

Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are in the studio with Britain's best-selling author, children's writer Julia Donaldson, who created the character of the Gruffalo. Also, Matt Lewis, who as a young marine biologist was shipwrecked in the Antarctic seas and has written about the experience in "Last Man Off", busker Catrina Davies, who travelled 11,000 miles with her cello, and the captain of the Cheshi...

Suzy Klein and Richard Coles with American singer-songwriter Ben Folds, Wayne Ingram who as soldier in Bosnia met and helped Stefan Savic, who was born with a facial cleft, the family who've lived in the same house for five generations, 12 year old Liverpool schoolgirl Millie Courtney who's topping the charts in Nashville, and black hat Wimbledon steward David Spearing. JP Devlin delivers a Tour d...

Tony Parsons joins Richard Coles and Suzy Klein. Tony talks about his new crime novel, The Murder Bag, and about his first foray into the genre of crime writing. He also talks about boxing, his Father and the importance of his family. Ian Boughton is the Grandson of Rutland Boughton, originator of the very first 'Glastonbury Festivals' and the composer of 'The Immortal Hour'. The festivals, which...

Richard Coles and Suzy Klein are joined by Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding, seventh Python Carol Cleveland, and Stuart J Cole who was abandoned as a baby, sent to Jamaica to live with family he had never met, and who turned his life around during a spell in prison. We go to Glyndebourne to meet Caroline and Andrew Thomson and Sandra and Ian Pusey who found real-life love at the opera, radiato...

Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir with Britain's poster girl for transgender acceptance Paris Lees, tsunami orphans Rob and Paul Forkan whose flip-flop company funds a foundation to help other survivors of the 2004 tsunami, teenage champion Jenni Herd who won an apology from The Times after she challenged negative stereotypes of young people in the paper, and garage owner Errol McKellar who's saved 24...

Rev Richard Coles and Suzy Klein with the chairman of The National Trust, Sir Simon Jenkins, talking about the National Trust and his new book 'England's 100 Best Views', Francesco Da Mosto sharing his views of Venice and elsewhere, Tony Bennett, the 'VisitBritain' and 'Countryside is Great' Take a View Landscape Photographer of the year 2013 on the perfect landscape photograph, Ang Zangbhu, a sup...