Blog posts by year and monthFebruary 2011
Posts (10)
Let's Dance For Comic Relief: I've had four micro-cries already
I've shot myself in the foot. Not literally, of course. That would make Let's Dance For Comic Relief too big a challenge even for me, and I love a challenge. It's the final week of training and I'm beginning to realise quite how difficult my routine is. Problem is, I chose it. Noth...
Romancing The Stone: The Golden Ages Of British Sculpture
When the BBC asked me to present the BBC Four series Romancing The Stone: The Golden Ages Of British Sculpture, I jumped at the chance - because I have long believed that sculpture in this country suffers unfairly from neglect. Our towns and cities are full of civic statuary that we routinel...
Mrs Brown's Boys: I love the lines that are not in the script
Welcome to the world of Agnes Brown. It's a world where family comes first, authority is to be challenged, and everything always works out in the end. What began in 1999 as a five minute comedy series for RT� 2fm (Ireland's equivalent of Radio 2), and then became a five-part stage trilogy, h...
Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets
There's a kitchen in a manor house on the edge of a village called Great Milton that has been my home for much of the last two years. If you saw the last series of Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets, it's the little bit of heaven where we film most of the show and where we've been lucky enough ...
South Riding and one of the greatest literary heroines
When, as a voracious teenage reader, I first read South Riding I took many of its themes for granted and thought it was a great story folded around a great love story. But re-reading it when I was wondering whether to develop it as a drama, I found the resonances go so much deeper. ...
The Toughest Place To Be A Paramedic
Last summer I was browsing my emails, when I came across an interesting one from the College of Paramedics looking for a paramedic to take part in an exciting new BBC Two programme: The Toughest Place To Be A... series. It appealed to me straight away so I sent a reply never thinking in a mi...
Faulks On Fiction: Exploring classic characters in literature
Historically television has tended to focus on the relationship between the author and their work. This has always worked well - think of Bookmark, Arena, and Omnibus - and is a very accessible way into literature. From the outset, we wanted to do something different and came up with an unu...
Fig Leaf: The Biggest Cover-Up In History
When I was approached to make a documentary about the fig leaf in sculpture, I sensed a cloud no bigger than a man's hand - or other prominent feature. Was the subject too slight? But it turned out that hidden within the roomy folds of this humble frond was an eye-popping story of sex, r...
My passion for A History Of Ancient Britain
My original interest in history - and then archaeology - started with childhood curiosity about my own family. I felt a need to know where we had come from. Why did we live where we did? Who were my grandparents and great-grandparents, and why did they have the lives they did? From that ...
The inspiration behind Outcasts
"Look at the pig!" I shouted to my wife as she came in, while I was watching rushes of Outcasts early on in the shoot. "It's a real piglet." As if to prove the point, the pig farted, squealed and peed on the floor of the set. "Cut!" shouted Bharat Nalluri, the director, a little wearily....
