Ping Pong Pussy

Available for over a year

Greg James is back for another trip into the BBC Archives, and into the past, using the big stories of the week and your suggestions to guide him to audio gold. This week, as Alex Honnold scales a skyscraper live on Netflix, Greg finds out that the BBC was there first. In 1967 they undertook a colossal logistical operation to bring viewers a live programme over two days following six climbers as they ascended the Old Man of Hoy, a 450-foot rock stack off the coast of Orkney. With no electricity or accommodation available the BBC drafted in the army, and 15 million viewers were gripped by the pictures of climbers hanging off the edge of the crumbling rock. A listener request takes Greg to the children's TV programme Why Don't You, which ran from 1973 to 1995, was presented by children, and showed a range of crafts, tricks and hobbies that kids could do rather than watching TV. Stamp collecting...brass rubbing...and hovercraft building. With social media full of people posting their pictures and videos from 2016, Greg goes one step further and searches the archive for 1916 instead. He finds an extraordinary and moving firsthand account of the Battle of the Somme. And as Timothee Chalamet earns multiple award nominations for playing a ping pong supremo in Marty Supreme, what happens if you put the words 'ping' and 'pong' into the archive? You find a ping pong playing cat, of course. Producer: Tim Bano An EcoAudio Certified production