Auntie Beeb
More than 13,000 people have visited a “watchpoint” to view a peregrine falcon nest in Cromer.
A nesting box was first set up after a peregrine was seen on Cromer Parish Church in Norfolk in 2018.
This year’s annual “peregrine watchpoint” attracted thousands of visitors over its five months.
The Cromer Peregrine Project (CPP) said this year the birds successfully reared two female falcons.
Source: Cromer peregrine falcon nest attracted more than 13,000 bird fans
Legendary songwriter Yusuf/Cat Stevens speaks to Mark about his new work.
This week, legendary songwriter Yusuf/Cat Stevens speaks to Mark about his new album King of a Land.
Yusuf is also playing this month’s Glastonbury Festival, in the famous ‘legends’ slot on the Sunday afternoon.
Listen at: The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe – Yusuf / Cat Stevens joins Mark – BBC Sounds
Actor Glenda Jackson reveals the influences that inspired her work on stage and screen.
Actor and former MP Glenda Jackson reveals the influences and experiences that inspired her work on stage and screen. One of the greatest actors of her generation, Glenda won Academy Awards for Women in Love and A Touch Of Class, and was Oscar nominated for Sunday Bloody Sunday. She has also won Tony, Emmy and Golden Globes awards for her theatre and television work. In 1992 she gave up acting to become a Labour MP, winning her seat five times. But in 2016 she returned to the stage, playing King Lear in London and New York, and to television for a BAFTA winning performance as an elderly women with dementia in Elizabeth Is Missing.
Glenda Jackson recalls her working class upbringing in Birkenhead, and how she won a scholarship to the drama school RADA with help from the manager of the Boots chemists’ where she worked at the time. She chooses the director Peter Brook as a major influence on her work, having starred in his radical 1964 stage production of the play Marat/Sade, and the version he subsequently adapted for cinema. She remembers also working closely with the director Ken Russell on several films, including the Oscar-winning Women in Love, adapted from the DH Lawrence novel. Glenda’s comic appearances on the Morecambe and Wise Show in the early 1970s are recalled as career highlights. Glenda Jackson also chooses Margaret Thatcher as huge influence on her life and career, as it was the policies of the former Prime Minister which prompted her to give up acting for 23 years while she served as a Labour MP.
Source: This Cultural Life – Glenda Jackson – BBC Sounds
Whistle and I’ll Come to You. is a classic 1904 M.R James ghost story adapted for TV by Jonathan Miller. It tells of an eccentric and distracted professor who happens upon a strange whistle while exploring a Knights Templar cemetery on the East Anglian coast. When blown, the whistle unleashes a frightening supernatural force.
This version is highly regarded amongst television ghost story adaptations and described by Mark Duguid of the British Film Institute as “A masterpiece of economical horror that remains every bit as chilling as the day it was first broadcast”.
A BBC Press Release for its repeat showing in 1969 stated that it was an “unconventional adaptation…remarkable, both for its uncanny sense of period and atmosphere, and for the quality of the actors’ performances”.
The performance of Michael Hordern is especially acclaimed, with his hushed mutterings and repetition of other characters’ words, coupled with a discernible lack of social skills, turning the professor from an academic caricature into a more rounded character, described by horror aficionado David Kerekes as “especially daring for its day”.
The stage journal Plays and Players suggests that Hordern’s performance hints that the professor suffers from a neurological condition called the “idea of a presence”. The production starred Michael Hordern and was directed by Jonathan Miller.
It was broadcast as part of the BBC arts programme Omnibus and inspired a new yearly strand of M.R. James television adaptations known as A Ghost Story for Christmas. First broadcast 7 May 1968
A celebration of the 90th anniversary of poet, humourist and absurdist Ivor Cutler.
The deceptively quiet wordsmith was born on 15th January 1923 near the Rangers ground at Ibrox Park in Glasgow.
“I have a harmonium and it’s going to explode in two minutes”, were the opening words spoken on BBC Radio 1’s Andy Kershaw Show in 1980 by a gentle voiced Scotsman called Ivor Cutler.
Championed by everyone from the Beatles to Billy Connolly, Ivor Cutler was a poet, humourist and absurdist whose appearances on BBC radio and TV span over 5 decades. As well as producing a vast body of records, books and plays, Ivor was a notable eccentric, often seen cycling around London in plus fours, handing out homemade stickers and badges to strangers.
To mark what would have been Ivor’s 90th birthday in 2013, BBC Radio 4 held a ‘party’, to celebrate his life and BBC archive in particular, with a full house, with performers, fans, collaborators and even his long-term partner, Phyllis King, introducing their favourite poems, songs and memories of Ivor. Weirdness from the archives, pleasure for fans, and a singular introduction to those encountering him for the very first time.
Highlights include Bramwell and King re-enacting a morse code performance of “The Little Black Buzzer”.
Presenter David Bramwell is a writer and musician. He is the founder of the “Catalyst Club”; a place for enthusiasts to speak on any subject close to their heart. Ivor Cutler is a subject close to his, having kept correspondence with him in the 1980’s.
Ivor died aged 83 in 2006.
Producer: Sara Jane Hall
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2013.
