Blog posts by year and monthJuly 2009
Posts (24)
Mick Jones' Rock 'n' Roll Library
For most of my life the kind of people who made Radio 4 programmes were all self-evidently much older than me. They were people of my parents' generation, people who smoked pipes... Read the rest of this post and leave comments on the BBC Music blog.
Peter Day's week
It is 21 years this summer since I started working on In Business, thanks to a sudden crisis. The programme's previous presenter had been tempted to a more lucrative job in television, and the vital deadline of the Radio Times billing was looming. That was when we decided what ought to be in the...
Facebook on Radio 4
Book of the Week on Radio 4 this week is Ben Mezrich's Accidental Billionaires, a book whose subtitle (at least in the American edition) is: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. Perfect Radio 4 material then. As you'd expect, the book has its own Facebook profile....
Happy birthday MI6
Tracking down spies for a documentary poses peculiar challenges. Most are reticent to break cover and speak in public. But the occasion of the 100th anniversary of MI6 tempted a few out of their silence. Many were delighted at the chance to talk about their work even if they drew a veil over the...
Sheila Dillon's week
Lunch yesterday at one of London's poshest restaurants - not, as many people think, what I normally spend my life doing, but a chance for me to eavesdrop on a meeting about the future of Slow Food UK. In Italy Slow Food is a powerful political force, in the UK it's been a lot less than that whic...
Who would you like to hear from on the blog?
The blog is picking up momentum. In addition to regular posts from our Controller (35 posts so far - about six per month) we've had 128 posts all together, from programme makers, presenters, commissioners, managers and even a handful of outsiders (like yesterday's lovely post by Margie Tunbridge...
On the fourth plinth
Editor's note. When Margie Tunbridge wrote to Radio 4 asking for a flag to unfurl on the fourth plinth we leapt at the chance. Here she writes about the experience - SB Like nearly every other Plinther I like Gormley's work (did he know he had so many fans?) - I've seen the Field for the Britis...
Radio 4 is back from Suffolk
The office is full of people who spent the weekend at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk. They don't look visibly scarred, although apparently it rained more-or-less all the time. Absolutely no one was miserable, though, because there was no mud. Sandy soil, you see. That's the secret of a happy S...
This is the last fox post. Honest.
And finally, photographs of the White City vandal, the urban fox that trashed the offices of Crossing Continents and The Report, waiting in the RSPCA's special cage, to be taken away and released. Released 'nearby' I'm told. Does that sound wise to you? Given this fox's demonstrated resourcefuln...
Radio 4 fox update - vandal targeted heavyweight current affairs
Jennifer Clarke, interactive producer and fox watcher, emailed me this morning: The fox was seen by a security guard last night still wandering free. Actually the Money Box area was unscathed - the fox seemed to take out its frustration on the Crossing Continents/The Report areas! An hour or s...