大象传媒

Howard Goodall is an award winning composer of choral music, stage musicals and film and TV scores. He talks to us about his work and his love of gardening and Newcastle United.

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Watch - written by Howard Goodall.

chooses How Great Thou Art as the song she has inherited and Mamma Mia by Abba as the song she'd like to pass on.

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Listen to Mary Berry on .

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The regulars of the Duke of Kendal pub in London on why they love gathering around the piano of 87-year-old June Turvey for an old fashioned singalong.

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Leading Scottish tenor Nicky Spence is an ENO Harwood Artist who trained at the Guildhall School and the National Opera Studio.听 Nicky is recognised as one of the UK鈥檚 finest young singers and is increasingly in demand internationally. He is an ambassador for Age UK and the Musician's Benevolent Fund. Nicky听 talks to us about his rejection of sudden fame, his background and his work.

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John McCarthy visits Kosovo and finds the beginnings of a tourist industry in the villages of Janjevo, Runjeva and Junik.听

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Listen to the episode of marking the 10th anniversary of the war in Kosovo on 大象传媒 Radio 4.

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John Gibson is a sports columnist on the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. He鈥檚 worked for the paper since 1966 and has followed Newcastle United Football Club since the 1950鈥檚 鈥楪ibbo鈥� talks to us about his life, his work and his love of NUFC.

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was formed in 1961 and is dedicated to building and maintain stiles in Sussex. Harold Rowling formed the group and is still there today, aged 91. We met him on a stile he designed in East Chiltington, near the South Downs.

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I鈥檝e been trying to buy a new television for a week now. Our first attempt took us to a famous and trustworthy retailer in a nearby town and between us we made such a spectacular mess of the order we had a day at home waiting for delivery that never came and the retailer鈥檚 computer network expired in a maelstrom of wildly errant digital information. Choosing one was difficult enough. I need only spend half a minute in the electronics section of a department store to feel how I imagine people experiencing the first symptoms of dementia must feel. After two minutes I am walking into things and breathing heavily through my nose, the feeling of incompetence all but overwhelming. I first had this in the nineties when I went to buy some trainers in a shop in Oxford Street and was so de-manned by the bewildering choices available and the contempt of the shop assistant that I have never worn a pair of trainers since. Anyway, after attempt v1 failed to download, I made attempt v2 today but got so confused by the choices of stuff available, and the sheer vastness of the devices that after half an hour pointlessly walking around looking at screen after screen of giant bidets from one of those mid morning home improvement shows I gave up again and bought a salad spinner instead. Have I been stricken with affluenza? Or is it a growing sense that my grip on things is going? Or, rather, I have to make choices about what to grip onto?
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Bags to grab at on Saturday morning when we provide a smaller but smarter suite of options for your consideration. Our studio guest is the tremendous Howard Goodall whose new book 鈥楾he Story of Music鈥� is based on his TV programme. We hear too from a young Scottish opera singer who said no thanks to the offer of a 拢1m contract, and is the happier for it. We meet John Gibson, legendary local paper reporter who has supported Newcastle FC since the 1950鈥檚 and written about the club for nearly as long.听 We think he may be the oldest sports reporter still working. We also go down the rub a dub for a lovely cockney sing song and meet a nonagenarian who runs a group which exists to maintain stiles across Sussex. All these plus John McCarty in Kosovo and the听 Inheritance听 Tracks of Mary Berry.
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Now, that鈥檚 what I call choices. As for the telly, in the end I went online and showed pictures of televisions to the dogs until one of them barked and bought that one.听
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