Archives for February 2011

Mark Watson is live on Radio 4 at 2300 on Monday evening with a brand new live pilot called Mark Watson's Live Address to the Nation. The theme of the pilot is 'ambition' and your role (apart from listening, of course) is to share your ambition story. What's the craziest (or noblest) thing you've ever done when driven by ambition? Tell us your story in a comment here on the blog or on Twitter with the hashtag #watsonlive and you may hear it live on-air on Monday night (oh, and did I mention that it's live?).

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Listen to Mark Watson's Live Address to the Nation on Monday night at 2300 or, for seven days after that, on the Radio 4 web site.
• Mark is @watsoncomedian on Twitter.

So we're ready to go. We've got the green light to turn on the 1930s era microphone, the two million modern day BH listeners will be poised by their receivers, and waiting for two important moments. One, the red light, and the answer to the question; will the old thing work? (The microphone, not the presenter). Then the second question, what on earth are they going to say on it. In this blog posting, we're all ears. The team is divided between those who favour a modern material the editor) and those who favour 1930's or even more ancient material. As you sit there reading this, do you have any advice, ideas or comments for us? Type them in triplicate using carbon paper and post them first class, in the style of the 1930s, or tap them here beneath, whilst multi-tasking, in the modern way.

Paddy O'Connell presents Broadcasting House on Radio 4

• Listen to Broadcasting House at 0900 tomorrow or for seven days after that on the Radio 4 web site.
• The black & white picture shows George VI using other specially made microphones at Buckingham Palace in 1937. It's from the BBC's picture archive.
• Podcast: download Broadcasting House to listen to whenever you want, on your computer or MP3 player and follow Paddy on Twitter.
• There are more pictures of King George VI at the BBC on Flickr.

All radio presenters who are worth their salt want to go where the action is, but are they all really needed when they get there? After all the BBC has an extensive number of foreign correspondents distributed around the world's troublespots, as well as having foreign affairs specialists such as John Simpson and Lyse Doucet who can be parachuted in.

This week on Feedback some of our correspondents allege that the Corporation went over the top with the number of journalists it dispatched to Cairo. Listener Richard Burridge came up with this list. John Simpson, Tim Wilcox, Jim Muir, John Sudworth, Lyse Doucet, Wyre Davies, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, James Naughtie, Kevin Connolly and Ian Pannell. Several listeners thought Jim Naughtie's presence in Tahrir Square was especially unnecessary.

So was there a cosmetic element to it? That was one of the questions I put to the BBC's Head of Newsgathering Fran Unsworth, who has the immense task of anticipating where, when and how events will develop all around the world, and ensuring that she gets everyone back safe and well, having spent as little money as possible.

BBC News can hardly refuse to cover a major foreign event for lack of money but it's a fair bet that when this year's budget was set for the BBC news department, no-one anticipated the extraordinary events of the last few weeks in the Middle East.

On Tuesday, when she took a short break from deciding who should go where in Libya, and whether it was safe to deploy journalists there at all, Fran Unsworth talked to me about what must be one of the BBC's most demanding jobs, and in particular about the number of journalists she sent to cover events in Egypt.

Let me know what you think about BBC radio's coverage of fast-changing events in the Middle East. Leave a comment here or get in touch via the Feedback web site.

Roger Bolton is presenter of Feedback

• Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
• Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.
• The picture shows protesters in Tahrir Square in the days before the fall of Hosni Mubarak. It was taken by Radio 4 reporter Hugh Sykes. We published more of his photographs from Cairo here on the blog last week.

Did you know why Jesus was born in Bethlehem and not Galilee? A kind of census required Joseph and Mary to be in Bethlehem around Christmas a couple of millennia ago. Fascinating. One wonders the Fate of Christianity had there not been a census.

I'm not pretending my alternative census will have any sort of impact similar to that of the coming of Jesus Christ; but nonetheless, it has had a profound impact on me and hopefully this will be shared by listeners.

I love interviewing people. I enjoy the mandate a microphone gives me to delve and duck around people's lives and experiences, stories shared, insight elicited. I never cease to be surprised at how the most tightly structured interview soon unravels into a glorified chat as my producer rolls her eyes knowing she has to wade through the material and attempt to make me sound like I might know what I'm talking about.

And radio affords a greater intimacy than any other medium: the power of the voice, the power of the pause seem somehow amplified on the wireless.

Yet taking the census questions as my starting point I soon became aware of their directness, their lack of tact. Epithets were superfluous in the attempt to quantify the state of the nation. A seemingly innocuous question like "who lives here normally" followed by "who will be staying here tonight" felt like the most personal of intrusions. And one thing I was taught as a young lad in Glasgow is to never discuss Religion and Politics. This caveat would have made the radio 4 census gathering project anodyne in the extreme. People's lives are politics and religion. They're crucial to creating some sort of portrait of the nations we call a United Kingdom.

Luckily my license was poetic enough to throw in a few cheekier, non official Census questions. "How many times have you been in love? Do you remember your first kiss? When were you at your happiest?" I'll never tire of the moment these questions were posed and were invariably followed by a smile, a pause, an intake of breath or some combination of all three!

My over-riding sense of my experiences making this series is how normal and simultaneously surprising we are as a country. And also, how friendly and trusting and giving we are. I felt genuinely buoyed by the people I met, both the set-up interviews and those whose doors we stepped.

There is much generosity of spirit, much kindness and a great sense of community out there, regardless of who lives in what sort of house and who they first kissed.

Hardeep Singh Kohli presents his Alternative Census on BBC Radio 4

• The picture shows Hardeep with Barbara and Derek Brown. There are more pictures here.
• Listen to the first of the new series at 1100 today and on the Radio 4 web site for seven days after that.

Editor's note: from the BBC Radio blog, great news for lovers of Radio 4 series - SB

Ever since 2002, when we started offering listeners the chance to hear radio programmes on demand via the original Radio Player, listeners have consistently asked to be able to catch up on all the episodes of series whilst that series is on air. There is nothing more frustrating, they told us, than getting interested in a serial in the third week and not being able to catch up on the first two parts which disappear after 7 days. In fact we became quite concerned that people might not even start listening to a serial if they felt they would not be able to keep up.

Well, today we have had good news. The BBC Trust has approved plans to introduce 'series catch-up' for radio...

Continue reading this blog post, and leave a comment, on the BBC Radio blog...

In the Radio Times, BBC Radio boss Tim Davie has written a response to the substantial public debate about the Trust's review of Radio 3, Radio 4 and Radio 7.

He endorses the suggestion that Radio 4 broaden its audience:

The idea of making more people aware of Radio 4 makes sense: there are so many programmes waiting to be discovered.

And denies that this means reducing standards:

The station's commitment to quality - whether drama, comedy or programmes from the radio archive - should offer further comfort to those who fear "dumbing down".

He suggests that readers looking for evidence of the health of the network dip into the Radio 4 programme directory - and that particular richness awaits listeners in programmes beginning with the letters 'B' and 'M'. Read the whole of Tim Davie's article on the Radio Times web site.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• The picture illustrates Ed Stourton's Bosphorus, one of the highlights of the Bs.
• Tim Davie has written about BBC Radio's increased emphasis on live output on the Radio blog.
• Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams responded to the review on the Radio 4 blog

I've just met five ladies from Florence, and things may never be quite the same again. They've lit up the Italian language, and after many false starts, if one day I learn to speak it, it will all be down to them.

These women, on a day trip to Rome, have flicked a switch in my mind that students and teachers alike lust to find. I've tried twice to get started on the language. I spent a month in Italy at a language school, alongside a party of Nigerian nuns, and random classmates staring at a pricey text book.

Each night, instead of homework, I'd hit the town, speaking English and pointing at menus and staring at guide books. When I left the class I knew nothing, and years later I tried again at a class here in the UK. Despite it all, I can say little of any use, and the whole enterprise ground to a halt. Until the moment two days ago I pointed a microphone at a line of women in their seventies taking a break from sightseeing in Rome.

I'd travelled there for Broadcasting House, to meet the woman who organised those parties for Silvio Berlusconi. The Prime Minister faces one of the most serious scandals of his life, in part down to the people he met there and the claims surrounding his behaviour. We wanted to ask other women in Rome how they viewed these events, known as 'bunga bunga parties,' and I set out looking for views.

The ladies were furious about the scandal. They shook their heads in shame for public life in their country. One, then all spoke the words that made me hear their anger, but also feel the flash of a linguistic lightbulb in my mind.

"Non frequentiamo bunga bunga!" They said. I heard them, and finally, I understood.

Paddy O'Connell presents Broadcasting House

• Listen to Sunday's Broadcasting House on the Radio 4 web site.
• Paddy took the picture on his trip to Rome.

1. Tony Hancock

Tony Hancock opened tonight's Archive on 4 about Face to Face, the hugely influential interview programme that ran on BBC television from 1959 to 1962. In the programme, produced by Chris Ledgard, Sue MacGregor interviews producer and creator of the programme Hugh Burnett. We learn about its presenter John Freeman - who didn't want to participate in this programme - and the many remarkable people who appeared in the Face to Face chair.

According to Wikipedia, Freeman interviewed 35 guests during the first series of Face to Face (the programme was later revived - between 1989 and 1998), only two of whom were women - Edith Sitwell and Simone Signoret. These photographs of Face to Face guests, taken during production by unnamed staff photographers, come from the BBC's picture library. The captions are just as they appear in the archive.

Listen to the programme on the Radio 4 web site and watch BBC Two's heartbreaking profile of Hancock on the iPlayer.

2. Gilbert Harding

Gilbert Harding appeared in Face To Face on 18th Sept 1960

3. Martin Luther King

Dr Martin Luther King, Minister of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, talks with producer Hugh Burnett in artist Feliks Topolski's home before taking part in BBC TV's 'Face To Face' programme on Sunday, 29th October 1961. The Negro leader in the struggle for civil rights in the Southern States of America flew to London for this special live transmisson of 'Face To Face'.

4. Edith Sitwell

On May 6th 1959 the distinguished author and poet Dame Edith Sitwell was interviewed on her life, her ideals and ambitions by John Freeman

5. Stirling Moss

Stirling Moss. World famous racing driver appeared on Face To Face with John Freeman on 12th June 1960

6. Cecil Beaton

Cecil Beaton with Felix Topolski and Hugh Burnett on 18th February 1962

7. Bertrand Russell

John Freeman, Bertrand Russell and Hugh Burnett, 4th March 1959. The last survivor of a dead epoch - this is how the distinguished philosopher describes himself. Now is his eighty-seventh year, he has used his long life to challenge the accepted ideas and conventional attitudes of the day. Lord Russell discusses with john Freeman his appearance, his achievements and his unfulfilled ambitions

8. Carl Jung

Professor Carl Gustav Jung and John Freeman in Jung's home in Zurich in 1959

9. Henry Moore

Picture shows Henry Moore being interviewed by John Freeman in 'Face To Face' (for transmission Sunday 21st February 1960). The programme moved out of its usual setting in the studio. For the first time in the series the interview was recorded by television cameras in the subject's home; in this case, Mr. Moore's studio at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire. An interview with Henry Moore is something of a rarity, for he says 'It is a mistake for the sculptor to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tensions needed for his work'.

10. John Reith

The subject of 'Face To Face' on Sunday, October 30th 1960 at 9.45pm is John Reith - first Lord Reith of Stonehaven - the man who inspired the pattern of broadcasting not only in Britain but in all the other countries which took the BBC as a model when setting up their own broadcasting systems. He was Director-General when the BBC started the world's first regular television service in 1936, but this will be the first time he has taken part in a television programme.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

Whilst working on this week's Britain In A Box, I had a rare treat when we managed to obtain a copy of the original, never-broadcast pilot of 'Men Behaving Badly'. The pilot was made for Thames TV, directed by their then Head of Comedy, John Howard Davies and starred the eventual cast of the first series, Harry Enfield, Martin Clunes, Caroline Quentin and Lesley Ash.

By common consent it was awful and, unusually, a second pilot was commissioned; this time directed by Martin Dennis, who went on to helm all the subsequent episodes of this long running show. That version was considered good enough to go for a series. Now the existence of this first pilot is one of those stories you hear about around the business but I was not at all sure if a copy still existed. In the event, writer Simon Nye had a cassette and, with the generous permission of all involved we were allowed not only to view it but even to use a short clip in this week's show.

It is interesting to note the changes that the team made between recording a pilot that didn't work and one that did and they discuss some aspects of that process on the show, which is the 3rd in our current series.

Pilots are funny things. It's not always clear if you are trying out the show to see if it works or looking out for what needs adjusting: a "we're doing it but not exactly sure how" sort of pilot; or rather a "shall we make this at all" type pilot. Getting that distinction wrong can lead to some pretty tough conversations after the event.

In the US the system is clear; there is a distinct 'pilot season' - from mid January through to late April, when every writer, producer, actor, TV agent and network executive in Hollywood frantically works night and day spending tens of millions of dollars in the hope of landing that elusive series sale for a new Drama or Comedy series. In that race there is no doubt. There are a frighteningly tiny number of slots available in the network schedules and you are all fighting to grab one of them. And if you win the race, you do in the certain knowledge that you then move on to the 'now what do we need to change' stage of the process. We would quite honestly make a 6 part series here with the money that is spent on any one of these pilots; as a UK writer working there once said to me, we could make one episode on the cost of the crew hospitality alone.

Here in the UK we tend to order pilots when we need them and we try to make them as near to ready for broadcast as possible. It sometimes happens that a particular artist or maybe an idea becomes flavour of the month and gets offered several pilots at the same time. I once called an agent to ask if one of his acts would be interested in doing a pilot for me, only to be told he was much in demand already. "He's got more pilots than Heathrow, Paul" was the exact response.

In fact the first pilot I ever produced was the first episode of the Young Ones. I delivered it to my boss who showed it to a group of his colleagues and reported the reactions back to me. "Don't worry, we've got more expensive flops than that in the vaults already" was one comment. Which brings us full circle, as that was said by John Howard Davies, who directed the first attempt at 'Men Behaving Badly' and who had the foresight to commission a second pilot and stick with the show.

Paul Jackson is presenter of Britain in a Box

• Listen to the third episode of Britain in a Box, about Men Behaving Badly, on Radio 4 this morning at 1030.
• Read the previous Britain in a Box blog posts, about World in Action and The Old Grey Whistle Test.
• Men Behaving Badly on the BBC Comedy web site and on Wikipedia. The Young Ones on YouTube.
• The picture shows Martin Clunes as Gary and Neil Morrissey as Tony, in series 6 of Men Behaving Badly.

David Liddiment, the BBC Trustee who led its review into Radio 4 among other stations, must be wondering what has hit him.

No sooner had he published the review last week than newspaper columnists, the odd BBC presenter, and a lot of listeners attacked him for trying to fix something they don't believe is broken.

The irony is, neither does he.

Actually I have been economical with the actualité: some listeners would like to wring his neck. What Mr Liddiment was pointing out, which is irrefutable, is that the further away you are from London, the less likely you are to listen to Radio 4. And the same applies if you are younger, non-white and from a poorer household.

The real debate is about whether that matters, and if it does, whether moving much of the corporation's output out of London, much of it to near Manchester, is the way to tackle the alleged problem.

I should declare an interest here. Although I have worked in London for most of the past 40 years, I was brought up and educated in the north, worked full-time in Manchester for three years in the 1980s, travelled there at weekends for more than 10 years to present the Radio 4 Sunday programme - and survived.

Last week, as you may have heard, I talked to Mr Liddiment about some aspects of his review. This week I travelled to the BBC's promised land, the shining Media City UK beyond the Salford Ship Canal (it's usually called the Manchester Ship Canal, but don't say that in Salford. Those two adjacent cities have a relationship not unlike the Hitchens brothers Peter and Christopher).

I am sure that most BBC Radio listeners, generous hearted as they are, will be delighted that BBC staff are to be housed in such splendid surroundings, at their expense, although the BBC insists that 'out of London' is cheaper in the long run. But of course, what really matters is what the output from Salford will be like. Will it be the same, significantly different and/or most importantly better?

Two very independent and passionate Radio 4 listeners Heather Howarth and Delphine Price accompanied me to New Broadcasting House in Manchester which will soon be made redundant when all the staff there move to Media City UK. There we met Ian Bent, head of audio and music production in Manchester to discuss these questions:

I'd be very interested to know what your view is on 'out of London'. Are the BBC's national radio stations too metrocentric and what should be done to change that - or are you quite happy with what you hear? Leave a comment here or get in touch via the Feedback web page. Apologies if you've had trouble getting through to our phone line in the last few weeks. The high number and length of some of the calls caused some problems but we think we've fixed it now.

Roger Bolton is presenter of Feedback

• Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
• Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.
• The review of service licences for Radio 3, Radio 4 and 5 live as well as reports relating to archives and children's output are on the BBC Trust's web site.
• Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams blogged about the service licence review earlier this week and, on last week's Feedback, Roger spoke to David Liddiment from the Trust about their recommendations.
• Picture by Evan Moss. Some rights reserved.

Olivier Award-winning writer Christopher Green has written a play about being a fan. He plays himself in the drama, called Like an Angel Passing through My Room. And, remarkably, so does Frida Lyngstad from Abba. The picture above shows the two of them in a Radio 4 studio recording the play and to mark what I am quite sure is a network first for Radio 4, I've pulled from the BBC archive a handful of lovely pictures of Frida and Abba from previous encounters with the BBC.

Like an Angel Passing through My Room is on Radio 4 at 1415 this afternoon. Listen to the play on the Radio 4 web site for seven days after transmission.

Abba on the Simon Bates show in 1977

Agnetha and Frida at the BBC in the 1970s

On Top of the Pops in 1976

Wearing Radio 1 T-shirts in the 1970s

Frida in an Abba television special filmed in Switzerland in 1979

With Lesley Judd on Blue Peter in 1978

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

Radio 4 reporter Hugh Sykes is in Egypt. He presented the Cairo end of today's extended The World This Weekend and he's been providing reports for Broadcasting House, PM, From Our Own Correspondent and many other programmes and bulletins while he's been there. If you're a regular listener you'll know that his speciality is intimate, humane conversations with ordinary people in the troubled places he visits.

If you're a regular reader of the PM blog you'll also be familiar with his photographs. He carries a camera on all his assignments and, during today's The World This Weekend, he mentioned the latest batch from Tahrir Square. So I rushed off an email to Hugh, asking if I might have some for the blog and he emailed me these. They were all taken "in and around Tahrir Square" in the last twenty-four hours.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Listen to Hugh's The World This Weekend (co-presented with Shaun Ley) and to his contribution to this week's From Our Own Correspondent on the Radio 4 web site.
• Hugh has made dozens of contributions to the PM blog, many of which make use of his photographs.
• In this short video, on the From Our Own Correspondent web site, Hugh discusses his career and methods.

I love television: I love watching it, I love working in it and I love talking about it. We produce hundreds of hours of TV in this country and inevitably much of it passes by largely unnoticed after its first airing. But when it's good it can be very good, it can catch the national imagination in an arresting and powerful way - "social putty" Alan Bennett once called it. I have always been fascinated by the stories of how those moments come about; what little touch of magic suddenly allows a show to capture the public mood or to speak to a particular moment in time; what elevates the good to the special?

So, the chance to work on Britain In A Box is a real thrill for me. I get to talk to people who were there when some special shows were getting started and to hear the how's and why's of what made them click in that comparatively rare way. Jeff Anderson was the last editor of World in Action, Mike Appleton was the first and last producer of Old Grey Whistle Test; both are old colleagues and it was a huge pleasure to get the chance to talk to them about programmes that have been so important in their lives. I've never worked on a series with either Simon Nye or Beryl Vertue, but they are brilliant comedy practitioners whom I know well and greatly admire. I've never worked in the field of documentary at all but I remember very well watching an early episode of Driving School and thinking: this is a different, the game has just ever so slightly changed.

One disadvantage of sitting down with all these experienced and interesting people, is that we always seem to gather too many good stories to fit into the half hour shows. This year I was lucky enough to talk to one of the great figures of our business, Jeremy Isaacs about his very early career working on a predecessor to World in Action, Searchlight. He told me that at the end of the first series of that show, the production team had been called to a meeting with the then regulators, the IBA, and told that virtually every edition had breached the broadcasting rules by pursuing a clear argument one way or the other. It was possible, they heard, the show on cruelty to children had not needed a balancing voice in favour of such activity but the regulator wasn't totally sure. No room for that in a show where we had great difficulty telling the rich history of World in Action itself in 28 minutes.

Mike Appleton is probably responsible for introducing more recording artists to the British public than any other single person, having been the final arbiter of who appeared on OGWT throughout its long life. He told me about finding an unmarked promo copy of a new band on his desk one day (a white label they were called) and being totally unable to find out who had put it there. He loved the music so he played a track on that week's show and asked if anyone knew who it was performing. Quite a few people were happy to inform him it was Queen making their TV debut. That didn't make the cut either.

We also get to access to items I have only previously heard about. In an earlier show working with producer, Paul Kobrak, I had the thrill of visiting the archives at the University of Sussex and opening boxes of files containing Frank Muir's original scripts, marked with his hand written notes and there amongst them was 'Balham: Gateway to the South', a script for Peter Sellers that had, so long ago, helped me fall in love with comedy. This series we were amazed to be allowed to see the infamous pilot episode of Men Behaving Badly. It was never shown, having been remade for the original Thames series but we've managed to get hold of a copy. Listen to that episode on Feb 19th and you will hear a bit.

Sometimes of course we just don't get exactly what we want. This time, I really wanted to talk to Maureen Rees, the star of Driving School and as such one of the very first 'ordinary prople' to become a big celebrity on TV - an instigator of a huge trend in our national life. Ironically, she has pretty much withdrawn from the limelight now.

Paul Jackson is presenter of Britain in a Box

• Listen to the second episode of Britain in a Box, about The Old Grey Whistle Test, on Radio 4 this morning at 1030.
• Read producer Paul Kobrak's blog post about the series (and listen to a fascinating clip that wasn't used in the first episode, about World in Action) in last week's blog post.
• Bob Harris's web site has a gallery of pictures from The Old Grey Whistle Test.
• The video shows Robert Wyatt's remarkable performance of Shipbuilding from The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1983.

Editor's note: Nadene Ghouri's Radio 4 programme about John Butt from a couple of weeks ago now has a melancholy postscript. On Tuesday, bombers struck the university he founded in Jalalabad. The programme is no longer available on the iPlayer so I've republished it here, in full. In this blog post, Nadene brings the story up to date - SB

An Islamic university run by former British hippie turned Islamic scholar John Butt, was bombed by the taliban on Tuesday. The attack came just two weeks after John Butt was profiled on Radio 4 in My Story - the Imam of Peace (listen to the whole programme below).

The programme revealed how John, now 60 years old, had gone to live in the often lawless Afghan/Pakistan border region in 1969 as a 19 year-old hippie. When the other hippies returned home he stayed on living among the Pashtun tribes who inhabit the region. He adopted the Pashtun's ancient tribal codes and became fluent in the language. He converted to Islam and is the only Western man ever to graduate from South Asia 's largest Madrassa, Darul Uloom Deoband as a fully fledged Imam.

However, the attack on the university, known as Jamiyat'al-Uloom, was not entirely unexpected. Over the last few weeks so-called night-letters (threatening letters sent at night and in secret) have been distributed in Jalalabad targeting those who work at the university, warning students not to attend and denouncing John Butt as a Christian missionary.

John Butt told the BBC he had welcomed the awareness the radio programme had created about the university and did not think airing the programme was related to the attacks:

Unfortunately anyone who works for peace in Afghanistan is going to be subject to attacks like these. But the voices of peace and moderation must be heard, whatever the personal risks.

During the making of the programme, he said:

We are trying to strengthen Islamic learning and promote a peaceful non-violent theology. To take a life is a sin. I look at those who do that so easily and wonder how far removed from true Islam they are.

The bomb, which appeared to have been set off by remote-control, was left in a water-cooler next to the gate of the building. No one was seriously injured in the attack, which caused considerable structural damage. The latest attack comes eight months after an similar bomb attack on a media training centre - also run by John Butt in jalabad.

In My Story John told how in recent years he saw the Pashtun way of life he had come to love become contaminated by a more militant hard-line ideology. He decided to fight back for his adopted culture by mobilsing young tribal men and women to work with him to promote their old culture over newer more hardline ideas; setting up a radio station broadcast messages of peace and solutions to conflict; and spearheading the formation of a new Islamic university to promote a non-violent theology and give a platform to moderates.

But as the hippie turned peace campaigner, his message of non-violent jihad has set him on a direct collision course with the Taliban and other militants who promote holy war, and who now seek to kill him. When asked in My Story if he feared he would be killed, he replied: "You only die once and I could hit by a bus tomorrow. But if I do die in the cause of doing good for humanity and promoting true Islam will be a good death."

Nadene Ghouri presented The Imam of Peace

• Read Nadene's story about John Butt on the BBC News web site and listen to the despatch she recorded for From Our Own Correspondent.
• The Guardian covered the story of the bombing. Butt wrote an article about Islamic learning in Afghanistan for the Hindustan Times at the end of January.

Editor's note: this week's Feedback focused on the English language, on Royal visits to Ambridge an on the conclusion of the BBC Trust's review of Radio 4 - SB.

There are many incidental pleasures to be derived from the latest BBC Trust Review, a copy of which is now available on its website.

For example, on page 48 it publishes a useful table which shows the cost per listener hour (CPLH) for BBC network radio stations. That isn't the same of course as how much each station costs, and obviously the more listeners there are the cheaper the cost per listener hour.

Still I was intrigued to see that Radio 3 costs over ten times as much CPLH as Radio 1, and around 5 times as much as Radio 4. Surprisingly, (to me anyway), Radio 5 live costs only a little less than twice as much CPLH as Radio 4. The station which has the lowest cost per listener hour is, unsurprisingly, the most popular, Radio 2.

Mind you don't get carried away with the idea that Radio 3 is massively expensive. It still only costs 6.3 pence CPLH.

The Trust, whose proud boast is that it is dedicated to "getting the best out of the BBC for licence fee-payers", published its latest review on Tuesday 8th February, after what it said was a 12-week public consultation.

It considered the overall performance of Radios 3, 4 and 7, had some pungent things to say about what it called the failure of BBC radio's strategy for children, and also backed the management's proposals for accessing past radio programmes.

The press reaction was, shall we say, mixed. I probably don't have to tell you which newspaper published the following headlines over critical articles.

"Oh no! Don't let the dumb down-brigade ruin Radio 4. Its the last bastion of civilised, aspirational broadcasting."

And the Daily Mail also said:

"Radio 4 has 10 million loyal listeners. So what does the BBC think of them? Too many are white, southern, and elderly".

The Trust's review is far more subtle and intelligent than that and addresses real issues that matter to you. It is worth an hour of any BBC listener's time. Shortly after the review's publication I talked to the Trust member who led it, David Liddiment.

He spent most of his TV life working for Granada television in Manchester so is particularly sensitive to the views of those outside the south east. The first excerpt from our Feedback interview is about the Trust's backing of BBC management's desire to widen Radio 4's appeal:

In a second, and shorter extract, David Liddiment talks about the failure of children's radio to a attract significant numbers of children:

In next week's Feedback I'll be in Manchester to explore further the BBC's plans to move more programme departments out of London, in particular to nearby Salford. Will listeners notice the difference and do you care where your programmes come from? Do let me know what you think.

Roger Bolton is presenter of Feedback

• Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
• Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.
• The review of service licences for Radio 3, Radio 4 and 5 live as well as reports relating to archives and children's output are on the BBC Trust's web site.
• Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams blogged about the service licence review earlier this week and, on last week's Feedback, Roger spoke to David Liddiment from the Trust about their recommendations.

UPDATE: episode one of Mind Changers was postponed because of extended coverage of the events in Egypt. The series will now start on Sunday 20 February with the episode about Walter Mischel's Marshmallow Study and you'll be able to hear the episode discussed here on 17 April - SB.

For someone as obsessed with psychology as me, Mind Changers is a dream series to make. There's just one downside. And that's the driving styles of some eminent psychologists. This is the fifth series of Mind Changers, the programmes which take classic psychological experiments and trace both their history and the impact they have had on modern thinking. The idea came to me back in 2003 and with producer Marya Burgess I've now covered more than twenty landmarks in psychology.

We've deliberately not made the series in chronological order, although if you do listen back to the programmes in order it does provide a potted history of 20th century psychology. Instead we aim to provide contrasting stories within each series. People ask how we choose the studies and I'll confess that it is a personal selection; these are studies which most fascinated me as a psychology student and which have gripping enough stories to keep anyone listening. The producer studied psychology at university too, which means that she really understands these experiments too.

And although a lot of students tweet me about the programmes, they're aimed at anybody who is interested in people, which of course is most of us. You don't have to know anything about psychology to wonder how it's really possible to convince someone that they met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland as a child, when they definitely didn't because he's a character that doesn't appear in Disney films, but belongs to Warner Bros. This study appears in the first programme of the new series which looks at groundbreaking research questioning the reliability of eyewitness testimony in court.

Making these programmes we're discovered that the standard retelling of these studies in textbooks often includes inaccuracies and it's fascinating to see how and why these myths persist. Somehow these experiments begin to take on a new life of their own.

So much of the major work in psychology in the 20th century has taken place in the U.S. that these programmes have taken us on a tour of the Ivy League universities and we're lucky enough to have had the chance to interview some of the most eminent psychologists in the world, so eminent that as a student I'd assumed they must all be long dead.

Our annual trips to the U.S. mean that we're getting to know our way around many a psychology department and starting to remember the locations of the canteens with the best Thai noodles. And this is where the driving comes in. To stay within our budget where possible we go by train or on foot. This horrifies some of the psychologists we interview who have usually booked parking spaces for us, but it's true to say that they are very generous with lifts. So many famous psychologists have lived in the pretty streets on the hills behind Stanford University that when we were making the current series one even took us on the equivalent of the Hollywood movie stars' homes tour, except that these were the greatest psychologists past and present (and for me, I have to admit, just as exciting).

We've learned that psychology professors in the U.S. have very nice cars, often hybrids, but they can have some rather erratic driving styles. One drove me through so many red lights in Philadelphia that in the end I pretended I was very keen to visit a random shop just so that I could get out. "But this is miles from your hotel. I can wait for you," he protested. Then in San Francisco a professor wanted to show us his favourite coffee shop where they did pretty leaf patterns on top of the lattes. This was kind, but sitting in the front passenger seat I noticed cars heading straight for us. "Is this a one-way street?" I asked, trying not to sound rude. "Not you as well!, he said, "People always complain when I drive on the left, but I thought since you're from England you wouldn't mind."

But we've survived all these journeys and we're busy working out which four psychologists to feature in the next series.

Claudia Hammond writes and presents Mind Changers

• Listen to the first in the new series of Mind Changers, about Elizabeth Loftus on Sunday at 1330. Listen to programmes from the archive on the Radio 4 web site.
• Claudia Hammond is on Twitter and on the web.
• The picture shows a car crash in Toronto in 1930. You'll need to listen to the programme to understand why. It's from the City of Toronoto Archives. Some rights reserved.

The BBC Trust's service licence review was hugely positive for Radio 4 and Radio 7. I have seen some of the listeners' responses on Radio 4 to the Trust. We are widely considered a 'national treasure' and the appreciation for what we do is humbling. The Trust's reseach received a record number of responses and revealed that eighty per-cent of the audience approved of us with a score of eight- or more out-of-ten. The reasons cited included "the passion and knowledge of the presenters; the range and depth of programming; extremely high production standards; and an intelligent and challenging tone". Add this to the new Rajar figures (one-in-five of us in the UK listen every week and Radio 4 accounts for one-in-every-eight radio listening hours) and the kind of quality delivered by Radio 4 for audiences is unarguable.

A broader picture too about radio seems to be emerging: we fit in with people's lives; we are modern, flexible and cheap. Radio 4 Extra (which is what Radio 7 will become) is another way of enjoying our drama and comedy programmes with something else thrown into the mix. There is a developing Radio 4 archive of documentaries and history programmes, science, film, arts interviews from the brilliant Front Row - all opening up other ways to find and share our programmes. Radio 4 is not confined to its successful schedule but can be enjoyed in different ways and this is a broad approach to the challenge posed by the Trust in their document this morning about expanding the Radio 4 audience in the future.

So let's think about David Liddiment's specific two 'buts' - prompted by our own excellent Sarah Montague on Today this morning (listen to the whole interview below). One, he said Radio 4 has a huge skew to the South-East of England. Those in the North don't listen as much as those in the South. And two, 35-50s aren't listening to Radio 4 as much as they were. Well, our audience has been quick to reply online; here are two examples from Twitter:

And I'm sure that listener appreciates the excellent File on Four, our flagship investigation programme based in Manchester with its first class reporters. We want talent on Radio 4 - wherever we can get it and we will continue to look widely everywhere for the best reporters and presenters. Of course we are keen for people all over Britain to enjoy our programmes more and the Trust understands this and supports our endeavours.

Partly that is about getting the best programmes and contributors from as many places as possible but mainly it is about excellent programmes and talent, both on and off air - the best on Egypt at present for instance, from those who know and carry authority, whether it is Magdi Abdelhadi from the World Service or Jeremy Bowen, our Middle East Editor (did you hear his recent programme on the Lebanon and wine? - highly recommended). We have plans to take more of our programmes out and around the UK - the Moral Maze, for instance, and a new poetry masterclass with Ruth Padel. I think too that as we develop a more international sensibility - which is only keeping up with our audience - we will be more welcoming to new listeners wherever in the UK they happen to live.

And of course as I have already said we have other ways of listening to Radio 4 in our developing archive and easier ways of searching and sharing our programmes.I am delighted that the Trust has endorsed and encouraged our plans for extending the Radio 4 archive on our website. We know how popular the archive is. For example the In Our Time archive is one of the BBC's most valued sites. In the coming months we will be making even more of our factual programmes permanently available. We will also put together some more collections of older programmes and interviews to support our seasons and events. The collection of Film Interviews was one of the gems of the Film Season. We are building something similar for World Book Night as part of the BBC Year of Books. Here is a sneak preview of the collection of Radio 4 interviews with the featured authors. Our web team have a range of other plans in store in the next few months.

So we are responding to the challenges raised in the Trust report in our own Radio 4 way and we will carry on trying to find and make available, in the words of Matthew Arnold, more of "the best that has been thought and said in the world"- for more listeners everywhere.

Gwyneth Williams is Controller of BBC Radio 4 and Radio 7

• Read the review of service licences for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and Radio 7 and the new permissions on the BBC Trust web site.

Editor's note: the BBC Trust today announced approval for some important changes at the BBC, several of which affect Radio 4. In this blog post, which appears in full on the About the BBC blog, Roly Keating outlines plans for an extension to access to archive content, much of which will come from Radio 4 - SB

Something happened today that should interest anyone who thinks the BBC's archives should be more easily accessible.

Alongside the BBC Trust's announcements about the Service Licence reviews of Radio 3 and Radio 4 came a new approval: an amendment to those two networks' Service Licences - and that of BBC Four - that allows all three the ability to offer programming on-demand for an unlimited period after broadcast. There'll also be an amendment to BBC Online's licence to reflect the new permissions.

What it means is that BBC for the first time has a clear, defined remit to start building a 'permanent collection' of some of its best programmes for free online access by anyone in the UK now and in the future...

Roly Keating is Director of Archive Content at the BBC

Read the rest of this blog post about plans for archive content - and watch a full-length Henry Moore documentary from the archive - on the About the BBC blog...

• The picture shows Henry Moore in his Hertfordshire studio in 1967. It's from the BBC picture archive.
• Read the review of BBC Radio 3, 4 and 7, and the new permissions in full on the BBC Trust web site.

Musical instruments carved from ice cut from a frozen fjorde, concerts by musicians from all over the world, held in snow flurries under the Northern lights. Not your typical music festival. These remarkable pictures, by photographer Emile Holba, were taken at the Norwegian Ice Music Festival, the subject of tomorrow's 'The Music That Melted', presented by Richard Coles and produced by Sara Jane Hall. Listen at 1330 on BBC Radio 4. There are more pictures on the Radio 4 site.

''Serendipity'. Or to be even more direct, 'luck'. Those are the words I most associate with Britain In A Box which returns for a fourth series this Saturday.

This is the programme where comedy producer and television executive Paul Jackson delves back into the origins of TV classics and explores what they can tell us of the era that gave rise to them. It's the programme where (as we have done in previous series) we get to ask television executives whatever possessed them to commission the likes of Big Brother, The Sweeney or Monitor, where producers reveal why they brought together The Two Ronnies or developed Pot Black, and where writers and show creators try to remember just what it was that helped them sell the idea of Coronation Street, Rising Damp or Shameless to Network Controllers. And all too often it is luck... serendipity... being in the right place at the right time.

Serendipity also comes into play when we select which four TV classics should come under Paul's gaze during February. Obviously we go for a mix of programmes, spanning the decades. We consider personal favourites - ones that played a (not so) small part in our own development. And we look for examples that broke the mould or at least help define their particular genre. But most of all, we look for programmes that say something of the time in which they were broadcast, that reflect the cares and concerns of the audiences that took them to their heart.

Naturally we check our short list with Radio 4 and the Commisioning Editor to see if our choices strike a chord with them (or at least doesn't duplicate what's being done elsewhere on the Network). And occasionally we start again. So it's with luck and serendipity that we end up with this line-up for the up-and-coming series:

• The heavy-weight World In Action which launched the television career of John Pilger, helped free the Birmingham 6 and was itself to fall victim to the broadcasting changes introduced by Margaret Thatcher; The head-nodding Old Grey Whistle Test that took popular music seriously, played fast and loose with the schedule and managed to survive punk (initially by sidestepping it) before petering out as rap music took hold;
• The slow-burning Men Behaving Badly, the sitcom that began life on ITV, lost its male lead after the first series, was cancelled after the second... and yet survived to not only help define and reflect the laddish culture of the 1990s but also to become the BBC's most successful sitcom of the decade; and
• The short-running Driving School, which may only have lasted for 6 programmes but achieved phenomenal audience figures, created probably the first 'reality TV' celebrity (in Maureen Rees) and helped launched a whole new genre of television programmes - the docusoap.

And of course, the serendipity doesn't end there. With this selection of programmes comes a rich seam of characters and personalities, telling their own tales of luck (both good and bad) and being in the right place at the right (or wrong) time - including the likes of Alan Yentob, Annie Nightingale, Beryl Vertue, Bob Harris, Chris Mullin, Douglas Hurd, Harry Enfield, Ian Anderson, Jah Wobble, Jeremy Isaacs, John Pilger, Leslie Ash, Mark Ellen, Martin Clunes, Mike Appleton, Molly Dineen, Paul Morley, Phil Hall, Simon Donald and Simon Nye. See if you can spot which is which... and why they were there.

Paul Kobrak is a senior documentary producer at BBC Radio 4

In this clip, not included in the programme, Chris Mullin - World in Action reporter and later an MP - tells Paul about the almost comical cloak-and-dagger procedure required to record an interview with a republican terrorist:

• The new series of Britain in a Box begins with World in Action at 1030 this Saturday.
• The picture shows the Birmingham 6 - Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Joseph Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker - subjects of the first episode of Britain in a Box, on their arrest in 1974.

The Rhyme and Reason series is the first programme BBC 6 Music has produced for Radio 4. As it's a series that explores the musical nature of words as found in poetry, it seems only right that the BBC's radio station that digs deeper into the intellectual psyche of music should produce work for the network devoted to intelligent speech. And with the knowledge that half of 6 Music's audience also listen to Radio 4, well, it was a no brainer really.

Still, it came about almost by accident - at least 6 Music's involvement, and almost didn't happen at all. It was a pet project of our then breakfast show producer, Nic Philps and Radio 4's 'Bespoken Word' presenter, Mr Gee. They had worked together at Radio 2 and wanted to do something together again. In Gee's words, 'The initial mission statement for the show was "To help the nation fall in love with poetry again". Poetry is a hard sell: it gives people haunting flashbacks of bad GCSE results and unfinished homework. We wanted to make a program that was more informal and laid back, but still introduced some powerful, thought-provoking works of art.'

Gee's previous work at Radio 4 helped get the series commissioned. Gee would present, Nic would produce it. But 6 Music is a small network and we could not afford to let Nic go to work on this full time. The best way was to incorporate it into his work at 6 with Radio 4 helping out in resources when needed. So it became a 6 Music production.

Nic and Gee created the format and the picked artists who were easy fits on both stations. Billy Bragg is a staple of 6 Music and as the Bard of Barking, easily at home on Radio 4 too. As Gee said, 'We wanted to invite artists who were recognised songwriters and create an intimate space to talk about their poetical leanings and their inspiration from the words. With each show, what inevitably happened was that the artists would become the fans and the poets would become the stars.'

The guests were booked, all was set. But suddenly, due to some unforeseen events, those driving this project were no longer involved. And no one else seemed to know anything about it. When was it supposed to go out? Where was the Tim Rice-Oxley episode? Gee could see all hard work going down the pan. We could see our first commission with another network disappearing before our eyes. We got in touch with our colleagues at Radio 4 and worked out a plan. What was obvious was that both networks were eager to see this special series get made and broadcast.

I appointed one-time Adam & Joe producer Ben Appleyard to complete the series. Fortunately, there were enough pieces of the puzzle to put it together and bring a great idea back from the brink. He had a listen to what was recorded, read through Nic's notes, consulted Gee and produced the amazing series that you hear today. A great idea was saved by the combined efforts of Radio 4 and 6 Music. Hopefully not for the last time either.

Mike Hanson is the Assistant Editor at 6 Music

• Rhyme & Reason is repeated on BBC 6 Music this week (Feb 1 - 4) at midnight. Listen to the whole series on the 6 Music web site. Tonight's episode features Tim Rice-Oxley.
• Listen to Mr Gee's poetry on MySpace.
• The picture shows Florence Welch. Listen to her programme.

Editor's note: Radio 4's listening figures for the final quarter of 2010 are published tomorrow. Paul Kennedy, Research Director at RAJAR, explains how they're gathered - SB.

RAJAR, or 'Radio Joint Audience Research', is the official body in charge of radio audience measurement for the UK. RAJAR was established in 1992 to replace two other measurement systems operated separately by the BBC and Commercial Radio. Today RAJAR collects information on behalf of over 300 stations, ranging from very small local services to the national networks...

Read the rest of Paul's primer and leave a comment, on the BBC Radio blog.