

Saturday Live
BBC Radio 4
Radio 4's Saturday morning show brings you extraordinary stories and remarkable people.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 16, 2019 • 1h 25min
Lorraine Kelly
This year marks Lorraine Kelly's 35th year as a broadcaster and her 60th birthday. Born in the Gorbals to teenage parents, Lorraine took a job at her local newspaper instead of a place at university and, despite being sacked while on maternity leave, is now one of Britain’s best known television presenters. Her new book Shine shares her secrets for success.Amy Powney, creative director of sustainable fashion label Mother of Pearl, spent much of her childhood without mains electricity or running water when her parents sold their house to live off-grid in rural Lancashire. Despite being taken to school in a handmade trailer and having requests for tracksuits denied, Amy found that her parents approach to ethical living had influenced her when she began a career in fashion.Professor Adam M Hill MB PhD is a dual-qualified Clinician and Mechanical Engineer with a military background and a career built at the interface of industry, academia and health systems. Adam is the Chief Executive Officer at immuno-diagnostics company Oncimmune, a company who are trailing new ways to detect cancer, but he has previously worked for the McClaren F1 team and has served in the Household Cavalry.Carol Bates' mum Vivien Grant contacted us after hearing our interview with former footballer Casey Stoney, talking about her struggles to play the game she loved. Carol is from the generation of girls who weren’t able to play football at school or elsewhere and it wasn’t until she set up her own team at the age of 48, that she fulfilled her dream.For Inheritance Tracks this week, actor Toby Stephens chooses You Are In My Vision by Gary Numan and Tubeway Army and She Belongs To Me by Bob Dylan.Producer: Laura Northedge
Editor: Eleanor Garland

Nov 9, 2019 • 1h 25min
Greg James and Jojo Moyes
Aasmah Mir and Mobeen Azhar are joined by Greg James, who started recording shows in his bedroom, did hospital radio, student radio, podcasts, and his passion has paid off as last year he became host of the Radio 1 Breakfast show, which has pulled in 250,000 new listeners in his first year.
Casey Stoney was Captain of England Women and is now Head Coach to Manchester United Women, she joins us to talk about being a trailblazer for the women’s game.
Age 4 Amar Latif learnt that he would go blind, his eyesight deteriorated during his childhood and he had 95% sight loss age 18. After working as a successful finance manager for ten years, he changed career in order to fulfil his love of adventure travel and set up his own business for blind and sighted travellers. He joins us.
We'll speak to Xenia Karayiannis was separated from her mother age 3 following the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and would not be reunited with her until she was 17;
and also to 18 year old Emma who is in Wales doing the CIN Rickshaw Challenge.
For Inheritance Tracks this week, writer Jojo Moyes chooses She’s Leaving Home by The Beatles and Are You Lonesome Tonight (the laughing version) performed by Elvis Presley, and we have your Thank Yous.Producer: Corinna Jones
Editor: Eleanor Garland

Nov 2, 2019 • 1h 24min
Hairy Biker Dave Myers
Dave Myers - one half of the Hairy Bikers – cooks and rides motorbikes, but he also studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, worked as a furnace-man in a steelworks and as a make-up artist, specialising in prosthetics. Alongside Si King they’ve sold almost six million books and grown a generation of fans who like real home-cooked food.Saturday Live listener, 80-year-old Crawford Mackie, is aiming to break his own 5k record today at Parkrun, attempting it in a new pair of running shoes. When Tim Clark’s father, Sir Robert Clark, died in 2013 Tim discovered he had served in the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War, ‘Churchill’s Secret Army’, and undertook amazingly brave operations behind enemy lines. His father was a war hero, a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross.In 2010, powerboat racer Shelley Jory-Leigh was competing for the world title when she crashed in Sardinia. The boat sunk to a depth of 85 metres but she and her co-driver were saved just in time. Shelley made a comeback and broke a National Speed Record on Coniston Water and competed in the Cowes-Torquay-Cowes marathon race, becoming the highest ranked British female finisher ever. Writer Dawn O’Porter came to our attention as a documentary maker - on polygamy, childbirth, and the inexhaustible riches of the film Dirty Dancing. She became a full time writer after moving to Los Angeles with her film star husband Chris O’Dowd, and writes bestselling and critically acclaimed novels while dressed in items from her extensive wardrobe of vintage 70s couture. The DJ and musical pioneer Norman Jay MBE shares his Inheritance Tracks – Mona Lisa by Nat King Cole and Optimistic by Sounds of Blackness.Producer: Louise Corley
Editor: Eleanor Garland

Oct 26, 2019 • 1h 25min
Soweto Kinch; Jonathan Van Ness
Saxophonist, MC and composer, Soweto Kinch fuzzes jazz with hip hop beats. He premieres his new album, The Black Peril at the EFG London Jazz Festival, which highlights the episodes of racial tension 100 years ago in coastal cities from Liverpool to Cardiff and South Shields.
Artist and biographer Keggie Carew's account of her extraordinary father’s life, Dadland, won the Costa biography Prize and became a best seller. Her new book, Quicksand Tales, features stories from her own adventurous - and occasionally misadaventurous life.
Retired geography teacher Helen Rennie has skied every month of the year for the last 10 years in the Cairngorms.
Listener Ron Singh formed the band Kissmet, fusing Bhangra with Led Zeppelin, with his brothers, after being inspired by childhood visits to the family's Indian cinema in Peterborough.
Cameraman Lindsay McCrae spent eleven months in the Antarctic filming Emperor penguins for the David Attenborough series Dynasties, which won him a BAFTA, but in doing so, missed the birth of his first child. He publishes the book, My Penguin Year.
Jonathan Van Ness of Queer Eye and YouTube series Gay of Thrones, shares his Inheritance Tracks - You Gotta Be by Des'ree and Big Dream by Jazmine Sullivan.Producer: Annette Wells
Editor: Beverley Purcell

Oct 19, 2019 • 1h 25min
David Suchet
Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by the actor David Suchet who has been taking photographs since he was eight when his Fleet Street photographer grandfather passed on his knowledge. His new book Behind the Lens: My Life is a collection of David’s photographs.Listener Kathryn Penny reports back from the 50th anniversary reunion of the Commonwealth Expedition which involved twenty coach loads of British students setting of for India. 'Serial innovator' Samantha Moyo wanted a break from her hedonistic lifestyle and organised the first Morning Gloryville 6am sober rave in 2013. They are now staged in 23 locations world wide.BBC weather presenter and meteorologist Simon King on his lifelong weather obsession and new book What Does Rain Smell Like? And we have the Inheritance Tracks of actor Kelly Macdonald who chooses You are My Sunshine by Jimmie Davis and I Love You by Woodkid.Producer: Laura Northedge
Editor: Eleanor Garland

Oct 12, 2019 • 1h 25min
Simon Reeve
Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by travel documentary maker Simon Reeve who has come a long way since leaving school with no qualifications; he wrote a book on international terrorism and his latest series is on The Americas.
Also, Kate Young who was homesick for her native Australia when she decided to cook a comforting dish described in Harry Potter. It led to more literary dishes, a blog and a book.
Jeroen Olyslaegers is an award-winning author from Antwerp. His latest book Will was inspired by stories from his own family, in particular his Grandfather who was a Nazi collaborator during WWII.
He joins us, along with Lucy Mathen who contacted us with her own extraordinary story - she was the first Asian reporter on Newsround, and went on to retrain as an ophthalmologist, founding a charity to treat eye problems in India.
We have the Inheritance Tracks of TV stylist and presenter Gok Wan who chooses Top of the world by The Carpenters and Make your own kind of music performed by Cass Elliot. Producer: Corinna Jones
Editor: Eleanor Garland

Oct 5, 2019 • 1h 25min
Harry Connick Jr, Andrew Ridgeley
Harry Connick Jr, was brought up by lawyers in New Orleans, but it was the music of the city that inspired him. A child prodigy playing a Beethoven concerto at nine, a disaster singing to Sinatra at 22, then Harry Met Sally happened, and It Had To Be You, made him a star. He He is now celebrating the genius of Cole Porter. Paulette Constable grew up in Manchester, the youngest of eight children from a Windrush generation family. Following an early divorce, she became a club DJ in 1992, with residencies at The Hacienda, the Ministry of Sound, Heaven and Ibiza Rocks, but explains how family responsibility caught up with her and brought her home.Rachael Rogan gave up a career in marketing when she was diagnosed with cancer. She describes how, following treatment and strong community support, she decided to make a radical change to her life and to follow her passion – children’s books.Andrew Ridgeley - one half of Wham! recalls about meeting Georgios Kyiacos Panayiotou at school, discovering their shared passion for music, finding success and their enduring friendship.Danny Wallace shares his Inheritance Tracks - Sunshine on Leith by The Proclaimers, and Live Forever by Oasis.Producer: Louise Corley
Editor: Eleanor Garland

Sep 28, 2019 • 1h 24min
Martina Cole
Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir are joined by the British crime writer Martina Cole, known to her fans as the Queen of Crime, with twenty-four novels to her name, fifteen of which have been No.1 bestsellers and translated into twenty-nine languages.
Thomas Harding ran a local newspaper in West Virginia before returning to the UK to research his family history, which in one direction took him to his uncle Hanns, a Nazi hunter who tracked down the Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Hoess. Now he has turned his attention to the other half of his family, who created the famous Lyons Corner Houses.
Emily Chung co-founded, with her sister Amy, the pop-up Rangoon Sisters Burmese Supper Club between their shifts as doctors in the NHS.
Justin Hawkins was a jingle writer and jobbing musician before forming rock band The Darkness. They had chart success with hits including I Believe in a Thing Called Love and Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End) before the band disbanded in 2006. Five years later they reunited and have just released a new album Easter is Cancelled.
Author and LGBT activist Armistead Maupin shares his Inheritance Tracks - Every Time We Say Goodbye by Cole Porter and sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Being Boring by Pet Shop Boys.Producer: Annette Wells

Sep 21, 2019 • 1h 25min
Gerald Scarfe
Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by Gerald Scarfe, one of our best known artists, caricaturing those in power, and also a production designer for theatre, ballet and opera and designer of animation sequences for Disney's Hercules and Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Liam Charles was the people’s champion of Bake Off 2017, and the youngest contestant in that series. He went from cake sales at sixth form to having his own cookery show, and presenting Bake Off The Professionals within three years.
Goldie Puricelli has taught kids with dyslexia, dyspraxia and autism, for over twenty years, she’s also a member of the Magic Circle and incorporates those skills into her teaching work.
Helen Zaltzman was an early adopter of the podcast, launching the award winning comedy podcast Answer Me This! with Olly Mann in 2007. In 2015 she began The Allusionist linguistics podcast, which was immediately named iTunes UK's best new podcast. Helen gave up her flat and has spent the last two years touring the world with her live show in which she uses her love of language to unpick gender stereotypes, crime reporting and vegan restaurant menus.
We have your thank yous and folk singer Shirley Collins chooses Fantasia on Greensleeves by Ralph Vaughn Williams and A Denying - The Blacksmith performed by Shirley And Dolly Collins Producer: Corinna Jones
Editor: Eleanor Garland

Sep 20, 2019 • 1h 25min
Andy McNab, Axel Scheffler, Veronica 'Fancy Chance' Thompson and Roisin Conaty
Aasmah Mir and Rev Richard Coles talk to former SAS soldier Andy McNab. He was captured in Iraq while leading the Bravo Two Zero mission in 1991. His book on his ordeal became a bestseller - his first of many. His latest book "Get Me Out Of Here" is aimed at young readers.
Children's book illustrator Axel Scheffler has given visual form to Julia Donaldson's characters The Gruffalo, Stick Man, Room on the Broom, A Squash and a Squeeze and many more. But if you find the Gruffalo scary, be aware that Axel's original version was even more menacing. His latest books are "Kind" and "The Smeds and the Smoos" - two stories about tolerance and inclusivity.
Veronica Thompson goes by the stage name Fancy Chance when she performs aerial burlesque while hanging from her hair. Her show Flights of Fancy explores ideas of beauty and her feelings of alienation at having been abandoned as a baby on the doorstep of a South Korean police station.
Actor and comedian Roisin Conaty shares her Inheritance Tracks.
And listener Emma Wyatt-Haines talks about overcoming serious spinal injury to compete in an Iron Man contest.Presenters: Aasmah Mir and Rev Richard Coles
Producer: Paul Waters