Saturday Live

Sian Williams and Richard Coles talk to actor and writer Sanjeev Bhaskar who's appearing in a Christmas TV special of 'Outnumbered', hold a poetry prescription surgery to solicit listeners requests for poems about solitude with William Seighart the founder of National Poetry Day, hear from Derek Amato who hit his head in a swimming accident, lost part of his memory and awoke able to play the piano...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles with comedian Lee Mack talking about his life before and after he made it as comic and Paul O'Grady on his enthusiasm for home remedies. Paul Hodgkinson walked to all 92 Football League grounds as his sight deteriorated and John McCarthy travelled on Leighton Buzzard's miniature steam railway with travel writer Monisha Rajesh who journeyed round India by train. Mich...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles meet Pam Ayres, talk to artist Annie Morgan who can't stop painting, etching and sculpting- a compulsion that began after she tried to take her own life by jumping under a train, hear from former Flt Lt Alan Pollock who remembers his time in the RAF- he abruptly left in 1968 having decided to fly his Hunter fighter bomber under Tower Bridge on the river Thames, foll...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles with broadcaster Richard Madeley, and a man who's spent many years pretending to be him and his 'Uncle' Stan Madeley, a woman who believes the secret to happiness lies in the Hawaiian hula dance, a rock and roll history in poetic form from Murray Lachlan Young, a father and son who've revived the sound and style of the original Proms orchestra, a couple who have bot...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles talk to comic, writer, children's author, winner of celebrity masterchef and fan of noir Danish cop show 'The Killing', Emma Kennedy, hear about former investment banker and farmer Jan McCourt's 'love letter' to the NHS after he narrowly escaped death under the wheels of his own tractor, remember the first ordination of women in the Church of England with the Revere...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles with crime writer Val McDermid and ex-offender Junior Smart who is helping gangsters escape a life of crime, Tony Lynn investigates the mystery of the Saltburn yarnbomber, broadcaster Jeremy Vine talks about his early career on Drainpipe Radio, TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson reveals her Secret Life, John McCarthy continues his exploration of Utrecht and Squeeze's Glenn...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles talk to tenor Alfie Boe, find out about a World War Two Lancaster Bomber airman's letter from his daughter which was lost in France during the War then found again, hear from the British Legion's youngest member, talk to a man who has recorded everyday day of his son's 21 years with a camera, shudder to the sound of a TVR sports car exhaust, thrill to the commanding...

Richard Coles and JP Devlin with actress and impressionist Jan Ravens Producer: Harry Parker.

Richard Coles and Sian Williams meet TV screenwriter and producer Phil Redmond, hear the story of Addisu Demissie and Junaid Jemal Sendi, two professional Ethiopian dancers and choreographers who used a dance project to move from the harsh streets of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to London's West End, share the sound sculpture of listener Lynn Tolmon who rejoices in the evocative squeak of a V...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles with author, playwright and poet Michael Morpurgo, Jane Esuantsiwa Goldsmith who went to Ghana to find her father and ended up being anointed Queen Mother of Akoanso village, Northumbrian dialect poet Raymond Reed, and animal movement coach Peter Elliott. John McCarthy continues his romantic tour of the Wye Valley, best-selling crime writer Peter James takes a strol...

On Saturday Live this week the Reverend Richard Coles and Sian Williams talk to broadcaster and comedian Robin Ince about science, art and rationalism, find out how Martin Spinelli coped with the car crash that killed his wife and nearly killed his young son, explore psychiatrist R.D. Laing's experiment at the Kingsley Hall commune in the 1960's with a patient who spent 4 years there, reunite a fo...

Richard Coles and Sian Williams with performer Jackie Clune, Rob Manuel who turned carnivore after 15 years of vegetarianism, Courtney Stewart who is turning the New Testament into Jamaican, and Sylvia Hillier and Jenni Evennett who as teenagers hopped on board the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour bus. JP goes stargazing with comedian and impressionist Jon Culshaw, and plays conkers with poet Luke Wr...

Richard Coles and Sian Williams meet author and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz, talk to Dolores O'Reilly who grew up signing for her deaf and mute parents, rack their brains with Italian memory man Gianni Golfera, and get rhyming with National Poetry Day founder William Sieghart. There's a Thing About Me feature about the UK's oldest working computer and an appreciation of spiders from Lawrence Bee...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles with cook and food historian Clarissa Dickson Wright, Daniel Bond and Stacey Drinkwater who can't afford a house so they live on a double-decker bus, Linda Cruse who experienced a bout of blindness which changed her life, and former Captain of the QE2, Nick Bates, who describes life on the ocean wave. There's a Sound Sculpture of a rugby ball from Andy Challis, a pa...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles with studio guest Charlie Higson and the extraordinary transgender love story of Victoria and Emma Cantons. Conservative Michael Ashcroft shows off his medal collection, we debate rites of passage for one mum and her son, the inheritance tracks of former politician Tony Benn and John McCarthy visits Kent! Producer Lisa Jenkinson.

Sian Williams and John McCarthy with studio guest Edwina Currie reflecting on her public and personal life, two very different attitudes to burial from Mark Elliott and Wendii Miller, Spanish author Javier Marias who is the literary and literal king of the micronation Redonda, the pros and cons of procrastination from Steve Swift, Talitha MacKenzie on why her song caught on in Serbia, the musings...

Suzy Klein and Richard Coles with studio guest Lynda Bellingham. This weekend in 1939 more than 400,000 pets were killed at the outbreak of World Ward Two. We talk to Dr Hilda Kean who's researched this forgotten piece of history. Fifteen years ago Philippe Kahn invented the camera phone which has revolutionised the way we view the world and communicate. Nicholas McCarthy, who has only one hand, t...

Sian Williams & John McCarthy with archaeologist and broadcaster Neil Oliver; Anthony Weir tells the story of his failed attempt to live with a pygmy tribe; open-water swimmer Anne Marie Ward reveals her plans to swim the Bering Straits; Alison describes her experience of living with face-blindness; Jackie Palmer explains why she loves the sound of a telephone exchange; a group of former Spitf...

Richard Coles & John McCarthy with actress Tamsin Greig; listener Lalage Cambell who sealed a friendship thanks to a washed-up wallet; Sally Becker, aka the Angel of Mostar, who carried the Olympic flag at the Opening Ceremony; Sophie and Louis Staley who organised their parents' wedding; and Dan Fox who sprang his friend from a Kabul gaol with the aid of a kipper tie. We meet the 90 year old...

Richard Coles & John McCarthy with broadcaster Joan Bakewell; listener Kirsteen Steel who turned detective to recover her father's stolen submarine bell; Jeremy Marks who in the 1980s ran a course to help gay people suppress their sexuality; moon rock investigator Joe Gutheinz; Olympic cycling pace setter Peter Deary; JP Devlin talks to the last surviving crew member of the Enola Gay which dro...

Sian Williams & Richard Coles live from the Olympics with newsman turned novelist Gerald Seymour, and James Partridge who founded of the disfigurement charity Changing Faces; JP Devlin mingles with the Olympic crowds; archer Tony George sets us aquiver with his Sound Sculpture; listener Arnold Gordon tells the tale of singing along to Over The Rainbow with Judy Garland in a bar during the Toky...

Suzy Klein and Richard Coles with boxer Barry McGuigan. Radio 4's Zeb Soanes on his path to recovery after suffering a paralysed vocal chord. Inheritance Tracks from Leo Sayer, update from Hazel Parry on her trip to the Congo where her parents were murdered in the sixties. Foundling Andrew Rowan on finding out about his roots and making contact with his half brother Ronnie Finlayson, a guerrilla r...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles with paralympian Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson; former beautician Georgina Blackwell who took on a local legal battle and has just graduated with a First in Law; Azzy B who is now friends with the boy he used to bully; Peggy Chadwick who secretly took the place of her twin sister in the choir at the closing ceremony of the 1948 Olympics; John McCarthy goes punting in Cam...

Sian Williams and Richard Coles with artist Grayson Perry; John McCarthy in revolutionary France; Ruth Ellis' nephew Mick Shepherd; JP Devlin meets naturist Emma James; Chris Tribe's Sound Sculpture of a hand-plane; Sylvie Dare's story of being rescued from a plane crash as a baby; Olympic Black Power athlete John Carlos' Inheritance Tracks. Producer: Lisa Jenkinson.

Sian Williams & Richard Coles with commentator and classicist Mary Beard; Namira Salim who's set to be one of the world's first space tourists; Phillippa Yaa De Villiers who was born mixed-race but brought up as white in apartheid South Africa; listener Owen Ephraim who worked with Alan Turing at Bletchley Park; John McCarthy goes biking with travel writer Ted Simon; JP Devlin meets cave colle...