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01/02/2012

Libby Purves is joined by Lord Kenneth Baker, charity worker Rudi Richardson, playwright Ishy Din and columnist and author Michele Hanson.

Libby Purves is joined by Lord Kenneth Baker; charity worker Rudi Richardson; playwright Ishy Din and columnist and author Michele Hanson.

Lord Kenneth Baker, former Home Secretary and a former Chairman of the Conservative Party, is a cartoon enthusiast. He talks about an exhibition at London's Cartoon Museum - HER MAJ: 60 Years of Unofficial Portraits of the Queen - which celebrates the Queen's reign through cartoons by some of our greatest caricaturists including Ralph Steadman and Steve Bell.

Rudi Richardson is the founder of Streetlytes, a charity for the homeless, which he set up after 33 years drifting in and out of addiction, prison and life on the streets. He was born in a women's prison in post-war Germany to a German Jewish mother and black American father. Adopted by an African American couple, he was brought up in California but, as he explains on the programme, he was deported back to Europe in his late forties. Rudi ended up on the streets in London but in a remarkable turnaround he set up the Streetlytes charity. His mission he says is "to rescue those who stand in the shoes I stood in - the addicts, the homeless, the broken."

Ishy Din describes himself as a taxi-driver from Middlesbrough who now writes plays. His new production Snookered is about young Asian men struggling to find their identity in modern Britain.

Michele Hanson is a columnist and writer. She discusses her memoir which recounts her youth in 1950s Ruislip. Michele laments the agony of being the only Jewish girl in her group of school friends and her comic but overbearing mother.

Producer: Paula McGinley.

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43 minutes

Last on

Wed 1 Feb 2012 21:30

Broadcasts

  • Wed 1 Feb 2012 09:00
  • Wed 1 Feb 2012 21:30

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