Star Cops and Sweet Fried Eggs

Available for over a year

Greg James, host of the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and self-confessed 'proud radio nerd', rummages through the BBC's treasure house of archives, using current stories and listener suggestions as a springboard into the vaults of audio, video, documents and photographs. This week, following the announcement of the European Space Agency’s first recruitment drive in over a decade, Greg travels to space in search of the first astronauts. He hears early assumptions about who would be suitable for space travel and, following a listener request, tracks down the BBC’s 1980s sci-fi drama Star Cops, featuring a prototype of the digital assistants we know today. With Fleetwood Mac’s single Dreams recently featuring in the UK Top 40 singles chart thanks to a viral TikTok video, Greg pieces together the story of how the band’s two couples – Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and John and Christine McVie – were tearing each other apart while recording their best-selling album Rumours. While we’ve been at home, rats have been invading our empty office spaces: the British rat population boomed by 25% in 2020. Greg coaxes some early rat catchers and rat lovers out of their hiding places in the BBC archives. And following last week’s overwhelming response to I Remember, He Remembered – a 1970s Radio 4 programme which aimed to find out how far back living memory can go – Greg hears from listeners with second-hand memories of the sinking of the Titanic and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Producer: Dan Hardoon