The Unequal Past

Available for over a year

Jim Smallman examines the attitude of society to our pasts and argues that men and women are treated very differently. "I am not proud of my past," he says, "I'm massively ashamed of huge swathes of it." But Jim's misdeeds are, he argues, "easily forgivable" because he was "just being a bit of a lad". In contrast, Jim's wife - a former pornographic actress - is not given the same latitude. Too many people, he says, would "use her past to hold her back from the future that she deserves". Recorded at the End of the Road music festival. Producer: Richard Knight.