Tag Archive for 'examples of my work'

The BBC has now published the details of the last of the series of 4 on The Kennel Club, which I finished editing and mixing last Thursday. As promised in my previous post on this series here are the details…

It has a fine dining room and a celebrated collection of canine art. It has a charitable trust and organises the greatest dog show on earth. That doesn’t stop Quentin Letts asking, “What’s the point of the Kennel club?” The kennel club was founded in 1873 by twelve Victorian gentlemen who liked dogs and dinners in equal measure, and wanted to bring some discipline into the world of dog breeding and showing. It’s struggling to do that today. Some breeders and showers are in open revolt against Kennel Club health regulations. Others from the welfare lobby say the Kennel club hasn’t been doing enough to tackle the suffering caused to dogs by generations of inbreeding. Quentin enjoys the sunshine, spectacle and order of a dog show in Worcestershire, goes for a walk with a breathless dog suffering a range of genetic disorders, and enters the hallowed halls of the Kennel club Clarges street as he considers whether this British institution still has the teeth needed to improve the lot of dogs in this country.

There are some strange ‘goings on’ in the doggie world and it appears OK to show dogs with major health issues but not OK to breed from them. But how do you get the next generation of dogs to show if you don’t breed from them? Tune in or use the iPlayer to hear for yourself.

This brings to a close the third series of What’s The Point Of.  Rosie Dawson, the producer and I have worked on all 3 series and it never ceases to amaze me how my clients, like Rosie for WTPO and Dawn Bryan for The Choice  keep coming up with new ideas to better the previous series, much respect and thanks.

As promised in my previous post here are the details of the 4th programme of the current series of The Choice on BBC Radio 4…

On The Choice this week Michael Buerk talks to Frank Evans, a butchers boy from Salford who dreamt of becoming a bullfighter after a holiday in Spain. The decision to become a matador meant he had to fight his way into the most dangerous and controversial sports in the world. It brought him ridicule and condemnation along with injuries in the ring and death threats out of it. But it was a choice he kept making despite a fearful wife and family and eventually despite ailing health.

A very interesting story about a guy determined to follow his dream.

As I blogged back in the beginning of July that I was working on the new series of What’s The Point Of…” for Radio 4, how it is going out I can tell you what the programmes in this series is all about. This is what the BBC is saying on their site…

Quentin Letts returns with another series offering a witty and thought-provoking look at some of Britain’s cherished insitutions. Over the next four weeks he casts a quizzical eye over Marylebone cricket club, the public library, the Kennel Club – and the RAF.

Programme 1 on the RAF went out last week and so you have only a few hours to listen to it on iPlayer.

All over the country, events are being held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, when the bravery of the Few saved these islands from a Nazi invasion. Even if some historians have had the temerity to suggest it was actually the navy wot done it, it’s an opportune moment for the RAF to remind us of their historic contribution, and why we need them in the future. Which is why exactly?
Britain was the first country in the world to have an independent air force. To get rid of it is unthinkable, isn’t it? Defence secretary Liam Fox has promised that the Governments strategic defence review will be ruthless and unsentimental – will he listen to the RAF’s critics? They claim that a bloated higher command structure in Whitehall argues for fast jets we cant afford for a war we wont be fighting. Oh – and its uniforms are horrible and they can’t march properly. Historian Max Hastings, War correspondent Sam Kiley, former defence secretary Geoff Hoon and retired Colonel Tim Collins are among those who join Quentin to ask the question, What is the point of the RAF?

In the current climate of cuts and savings this is a very timely look at what the RAF actually does for us.
Programme 2 is on the MCC – Marylebone Cricket Club and goes out today at 9am and tonight at 9:30pm

The celebrated historian George Trevelyan once wrote that if the French nobility had only played cricket with their servants they wouldn’t have had their chateaux burnt. Today, with the revolution taking place within the game itself, Quentin Letts casts a quizzical eye over Marylebone cricket club, the English institution responsible for maintaining its laws and upholding its spirit. It’s not easy for MCC to shake off the weight of history. It resisted the demands of sexual equality almost into the present century, and it is still berated for its exclusiveness. The programme hears from Rachael Heyhoe-Flint who captained the first English women’s team allowed onto the Lord’s pitch, and to another former Captain, Mike Gatting, who berates MCC members for a display of very ungentlemanly manners to fellow cricketer, Ian Botham. The powerhouse of cricket is now in India, the governing body is in Dubai and the focus of the game is shifting from test match to twenty-twenty But this private members club, the owner of the most famous sports ground in the world , still seeks a place at the table. Quentin talks to MCC chief executive Keith Bradshaw about what it’s doing there – resisting the economic and global forces of modernity or leading the charge of change?

Cricket fans watch out!!

Programme 3 on Public Libraries goes out next Tuesday August 31st

Question: Where can you go to reduce your fear of crime, have a massage, ring a church bell, get some information about council tax, and engage in some heavy petting without being told off? Quentin Letts is surprised and sometimes disheartened by the answer; a library. Of course, you can borrow a book as well, but campaigners argue that – with some authorities spending less than ten per cent of their library budgets on books -something has gone very wrong with the way the service is being managed. Public Libraries have come a long way since Manchester opened the first in the 1850s. But where is the service going? Gleaming new buildings have opened in Newcastle, Whitechapel and Brighton – but more than 80 other libraries have been closed in the last five years; an age of public spending cuts surely means more. Former poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, campaigner Tim Coates and Arts minister Edward Vaizey join Quentin Letts as he asks, what’s the point of the public library?

If you heard the debate on Today on Radio 4 today you will want to listen to this programme.

The final programme in the series is scheduled to go out on Tuesday 7th September and is on The Kennel Club and I finish working on it on Thursday. Once there is some more info on it I will let you know.

I have just finished editing and uploading the series of 4 “The Choice” produced by Dawn Bryan. Still can’t tell you who the interviewees are yet as Radio 4 have yet to announce them but they are another excellent set of stories all very different from each other. They are due to start going out on 12th August.

Michael Buerk interviews people who have made life-altering decisions and talks them through the whole process, from the original dilemma to living with the consequences.

BBC Radio 4 are repeating a programme “The Greed Imperative” I worked on with Rosemary Foxcroft first broadcast on 23rd May 2010. The repeat goes out on Monday 28th June 2010 at 11am.

Having worked in the City before becoming an academic and a nun, Dr Catherine Cowley is well acquainted with the temptations and the financial risks that city workers face each day. Dr Cowley questions whether money is the only motivation for those who work in the City and discusses whether greed is in fact a necessary and vital dynamic behind a successful economy.
Is greed linked to the endless growth demanded by our capitalist society? Dr Edward Skidelsky, lecturer in Philosophy at Exeter University, says that the economists in the past assumed that growth was a process with an end, and once that end came, people would enjoy the fruits of wealth. And as Karl Marx put it, “we’d hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon and discuss poetry in the evening”.
Although the finance sector at the moment is being characterised as a hotbed of greed, would any of us, given the opportunity and the circumstances, act any differently? Are we focusing on bankers’ greed so we don’t have to look at our own?

Do catch it if you can otherwise catch it on iPlayer next week.