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 Listen to Excess Baggage for
18ÌýNovemberÌý2006
/EQUATORIAL and TROPICAL
Although rainforest covers only 3% of the land it is home to half the species of animals and plants in the world.Ìý There can be over 250 species of tree in any given area of forest and 80% of all insect life lives there. As only 2% of sunlight filters through the canopy and fungi are vital in the ecology, some of it even grows in the heads of ants!
Sandi Tokvig is joined by Huw Cordey, Natural History TV Producer, to talk about his most recent programme Jungles which is being broadcast this Sunday on ´óÏó´«Ã½ One as part of the series Planet Earth.
Many parents of an eighteen or nineteen year old might well wave goodbye to their offspring on their way to other side of the world to experience what has become known, in recent times, as a ‘gap year’.Ìý ‘The gap’ being usually, between the end of school and the beginning of higher education.
Sandi meets Simon Hoggart and Emily Monk who have put together a selection of gappers’ e-mails and letters and ‘professional’ gap year traveller, Sean and his mother Wendy to discuss what it’s like when parents join the young travellers abroad.
Presented by Sandi Toksvig
Photo: Belum Forest in the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia
This week's guests:Ìý
Huw Cordey is a ´óÏó´«Ã½ Television Producer who has worked on Life of Mammals, Andes to Amazon, Land of the Tiger, and programmes on the river otter, big cats and R4’s Nature programme.ÌýÌý Huw was brought up abroad in Venezuela, Nigeria and Turkey among other places.Ìý He got very interested in rainforests as a child and made his first serious visit to one in 1989.Ìý Huw is the producer of this Sunday’s episode of Planet Earth on ‘Jungles’.
´óÏó´«Ã½ TVÌý Episode 8:
Sun 19 Nov 2006, 9pm ´óÏó´«Ã½ One/´óÏó´«Ã½ HD
repeated Sat 25 Nov 06, 7pm ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two
Planet Earth: A Fresh Look at a Spectacular World
by David Attenborough (Foreword), Alastair Fothergill, Jonathan Keeling, Vanessa Berlowitz, Mark Brownlow, Huw Cordey, Mark Linfield
Publisher: ´óÏó´«Ã½ Books
ISBN: 0563522127
Emily Monk is the youngest of three.Ìý When her older brother and sister did their gap years she became fascinated by the letters and emails home.Ìý Emily herself did a stint in Ghana working on a website and writing articles for a publishing house called Ghana Review International.Ìý Through it she came in contact with an orphanage.Ìý In order to raise money for the orphanage, Emily collected some gap year’s emails from friends and family and put them together in a booklet Dear Mum.
is a columnist and sketch writer and presenter.Ìý In December 2005 at Christmas fayre Simon picked up Emily’s charity booklet.Ìý Simon asked Emily to collaborate on a bigger project, which resulted in a newly published book called Don’t tell Mum, Hair raising messages home from gap year travellers.
Simon did his own gap year in Uganda in 1965 at a Presbyterian school where the pupils wore kilts and goatskin sporrans.
Don’t tell Mum, Hair raising messages home from gap year travellers
Simon Hoggart with Emily Monk
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 184354539X
Sean is almost a professional gap year traveller.Ìý His first experience abroad, after school, was with the American summer camps organisation Bunac.Ìý After university he followed a popular pattern for gapers and went to India, Thailand and Australia.Ìý He also travelled to Uganda.Ìý Later on, his career break involvedÌý a two year trip to South America, West Africa, Asia, Turkey, the Stans, Iran and South East Asia.
Sean has invented a card game called Backpacker, handy for the real backpackers.
card gameÌýis available at many High Street stores
WendyÌýand her husband decided to go to China and Peru because their son Sean was going to be there.Ìý Their self arranged trip was filled with unexpected and at times worrying experiences but she enjoyed travelling that way - although she wouldn’t do it again without Sean.The ´óÏó´«Ã½ cannot be held responsible for
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| PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES |
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 Sandi Toksvig:
The daughter of a foreign correspondent, Sandi has been travelling all her life more info |
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John McCarthy is a widely travelled journalist and presenter with a particular interest in the Middle East.
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