Robbie Williams at the BBC Radio Theatre.

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Teen Heartthrobs: From Valentino to Harry Styles

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Watch the recording of Radio 2's new jingles for 2012 and beyond.

Graham Norton kicks off 2DAY 2012

Ed's note: Comedian Stewart Lee presents It's Got Bells On, a new documentary, part of the Dance Season on BBC Radio 2. Here he writes about his love of Morris dancing. Really - PM

East Suffolk Morris men: Photo by JossSmithson, used under this licence

I don't remember when I saw my first Morris dance.

I think it was sometime in the early seventies. My mum was working, I wasn't yet at school, and I spent a lot of time with my grand-dad. He'd been, or maybe was still, a rep for Colman's, the Norfolk based mustard company, who had diversified into providing wine and spirits. I have memories, though they may have become semi-fictionalised, of accompanying him to rural events - hunts, fetes and festivals - in forgotten places between Birmingham and Norwich, when he was invited by virtue of some commercial connection with the booze supply.

I remember a fuzzy photograph of a brown corduroy, pre-school me with him, watching men in white on a patch of grass, leaping and dancing. I've looked for it but I can't find it. Maybe it never happened. But for me that was where the Morris was filed, for most of my life, in the seventies memories stash, in the past, something mysterious and beautiful and pastoral, and probably on the way out now, along with butterflies and wild flowers and birds that nest in hedgerows.

But, like some threatened species making a comeback, over the last decade I've noticed the Morris, and various mutated species of traditional English dance, staging a slight return.

At the folk-singer Martin Carthy's 60th birthday show in Oxford, ten years ago, a Morris troupe took the stage before a crowd of thousands, and again, when I saw the Carthy clan gathered at the Royal Albert Hall five year back.

A live art promoter in the village of Hovingham, on the Yorkshire moors, unexpectedly got Damian Barber's traditional dancers the Black Swan Rappers to open before one of my stand-up comedy shows in the mid-noughties, stunning an initially skeptical crowd with their violent and virile performance. This year I invited the folk rock band Trembling Bells to appear in a season of music and comedy I was curating at the South Bank center, and they brought with them the Belles Of London City, a new all-female Morris trio.

But my fondness for The Morris was sealed six years ago.

My wife and I were married in the Forest of Dean, in her native Gloucestershire. Searching for something significant and local, she had booked the Forest Of Dean Morris Men for the reception, attended by fifty or so people, in a musky woodland cellar. We'd been married in a church that morning.

My wife's a Catholic, and I am an atheist, but nonetheless I'll happily admit that the priest gave a great service, and the ritual elements added a real significance to the ceremony. That said, the service did represent for me a compromise I suppose, of the sort one must make in a marriage. I hadn't expected it, but the appearance of the Morris men that evening somehow squared the circle, and left me feeling that the old gods, too, had been paid their due.

The Forest Of Dean Morris Men came out of the black November night, all in white. They were accompanied by a "beast", in their particular case a man in the costume of a bright red stag, who excited all the young ladies, and intimidated the men.

I normally hate dancing, or being the centre of attention in any way, but I felt no shame as my new wife and I were made to skip in circles round the stone walled cellar, and between and beneath sudden arches made of the Morris men's human hands, while the beast looked on approvingly and clacked its wooden hooves, draped in adoring women, scowled at by their temporarily cuckolded partners.

It's no exaggeration to say that The Morris made our day, and in the dark times of exhaustion and 3am feeds, when the romance of your first meeting seems so far away, we reach back to the symbols we laid in store to give us strength at later dates, and I see the Morris once more.

That's why, when Radio 2 asked me to narrate It's Got Bells On, I couldn't say no. I am forever in the dance's debt.

Stewart Lee is a comedian

• It's Got Bells On airs on BBC Radio 2 at 10pm on Monday December 12th as part of the Dance Season
• Stewart Lee's current live show is Carpet Remnant World
• Stewart is also one of the guest editors this year for Radio 4's Today, and his programme will be on air on Saturday 31st December

Rosie Wainwright from the RPO joins the prison musicians onstage for their final performance

Walking into a prison for the first time is a nerve-wracking and intimidating experience. As each heavy door slams behind you, the sense of claustrophobia increases - even in open spaces there's netting overhead, and the barbed wire is clear to see.

In September 2011, I experienced that moment first hand, as I followed a group of inmates at the Mount Prison Hemel Hempstead who were taking part in a rehabilitative music programme with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

My image of prison before that moment had been created from film and TV programmes. Part Prisoner Cell Block H, part Porridge, part Miami Mega-Jail, I was expecting a dark Victorian warren with scarred inmates and embittered staff. What I encountered changed my perspective (and my life) completely.

Built in the 1980s The Mount's red-brick walkways and green open spaces made it feel more like a conference centre than a prison. Perfectly groomed flowerbeds fringe the path through the central quadrangle, and we were surprised to see ducks nesting in bushes. The prison buildings themselves felt (and smelled) like my old school - lino on the floor and that thick wipe-clean paint on the walls.

The project was to be based in one of The Mount's old workshops, where at one point prisoners had been employed to smash CDs, but which now was a large echoey open space with the feeling of a school gym.

Walking into that room for the first time I didn't know what to expect or who I would encounter. We'd been assured that all the participants had been screened in advance, but we hadn't been told who these men were or what they'd done.

I shouldn't have worried though. Within seconds, a friendly face had shaken my hand and offered a cup of tea. I was introduced around and at first had a job distinguishing between the project leaders and the inmates themselves. In some ways, the thing that surprised me most was how normal everyone was - nothing like the TV-fuelled image of an inmate I'd had before.

Over the 5 week period it was inspiring to watch the inmates overcome their own personal hurdles - one guy who had never picked up an instrument before and only spoke to us in mumbles, by the end of the project had learnt a bit of bass guitar, drums and knew a couple of tunes on the marimba. It was amazing to watch his confidence grow.

From a programme-making perspective, the challenge for myself and my assistant producer Ashley was to capture those breath-taking moments of personal development with sensitivity, but whilst making sure we could actually hear their words above the echoing din of the room.

Some of the stories were really difficult to hear - and every inmate we spoke to had a difficult story to tell. When I sat listening back to the audio we'd recorded, I frequently found myself in tears. Their honesty was incredibly moving. But the one thing they all had in common was that music had changed their lives.

Heather Davies is one of the Radio Academy's 30 Under 30 and also works on Sounds of the 20th Century for BBC Radio 2. Heather is @heatherrhian on Twitter.

• The Band Behind Bars is on Radio 2 on Monday 28 November at 10pm. You'll be able to hear it online shortly afterwards.
• Music in Prisons: The Irene Taylor Trust website
• Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) website
• The RPO blog: A Bigger Sound - Week 1 and Week 2
• The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra website

Margaret Evison with Jeremy Vine

I never thought I would sit at my desk with tears rolling down my cheeks.

My colleagues are now used to the sight of me sobbing and it's one guaranteed way to get them to make you a cup of tea. It still surprised me though the first time I saw Jeremy Vine wiping a tear from under his glasses.

It was Jeremy who came up with the idea for this special series for Remembrance week. Each programme features an interview with the mother of a fallen soldier in which she tells the story of his life and his death and shares the songs he loved to listen to.

The soundtrack is an eclectic mix from rock to rap to rave. There's a football chant, a soaring school hymn, a party anthem and a beautiful piece of classical cello. The music takes the mothers back to a particular time or place and the memories that emerge paint a picture of the son she lost.

As an army wife, I knew it would be an emotional rollercoaster as the subject is very close to home. I know how it feels to wait and to worry. I also know the feeling of complete joy when my husband walks through the door after six months away.

The five mothers we met never had that homecoming hug. Two of them felt fortunate to be able to hold their son's hand as he lay seriously wounded in a hospital bed in Birmingham but for the others their reunion was at RAF Lyneham when his coffin was carried from the plane.

These are some of the intensely personal moments the mothers shared when we visited them around the country. We were welcomed into family homes in Abergavenny, Caversham, Sheffield and Dulwich and greeted warmly on a windy day out at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

Jeremy Vine says it has been an incredible privilege to spend time with the mothers:

"I have never in my entire career recorded interviews which have been so powerful and so moving. Sons who were only boys, who died on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan as young as 19, are missed as much today by their family as the day they left them. I doubt we will ever hear these songs the same way again."

The music has already started to follow me round. It feels like every time I turn on the TV or turn up the radio, one of the songs is playing and my thoughts turn immediately to Richard, John, Mark, Cyrus or Liam.

I will think of their brave mothers when I start moaning about the magnolia paint and floral curtains in our next army quarter.

We are all fiercely proud of a man in uniform at the centre of our lives but mine is still here and I realise now more than ever how lucky that makes me.

Jill Misson is a producer of The Songs My Son Loved which is on Radio 2 at 1.30pm next week, 7th to 11th of November.

On the 5 live blog station controller Adrian Van-Klaveren has written a post detailing 5 live's coverage of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. He recalls where he was at the time (as I'm sure we've all done in the last few days):

At the time I was Head of BBC Newsgathering. I remember catching up with the breakfast news and then setting off for some meetings at the BBC's Washington office. It seemed an entirely unremarkable news day. After 15 minutes walk, I arrived in the office to find an extraordinary amount of activity for that time of the morning. The first plane had struck the Twin Towers.

Within the coverage Peter Allen and Stephen Nolan will be reporting and presenting from the United States, including special programmes from Florida where President Bush heard the news and Victoria Derbyshire will have rare access to Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, presenting her Friday programme from there. You can find more details and leave a comment on the 5 live blog.

On Monday night Radio 1's Mike Davies presented a musical history of 9/11 and its aftermath, featuring interviews, archive and the sounds of the likes of Moby, My Chemical Romance and the Beastie Boys.

Radio 2 marks the anniversary with Faith and 9/11. Journalist and Pause For Thought contributor, Abdul-Rehman Malik guides listeners through a reflective anthology combining personal reflections - past and present - with news archive including an interview given to the BBC by the Archbishop Of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, shortly after the terrorist attacks.

A Guernica for Gotham on Radio 3 investigates how New York artists have responded to the destruction of the Twin Towers. Interviewees include composer Steve Reich and writer Meg Wolitzer.

Radio 4 is currently broadcasting the second half of this year's Reith Lectures under the title Securing Freedom and you can download the first of Eliza Manningham-Buller's lectures, Terror, from the website.

There are details of Radio 4's other coverage on this page 9/11 - Ten Years On including The Saturday Play Washington, 9/11 and The Day before 9/11, a portrait of New York, America and the wider world as it was - the day before.

Gwyneth Williams, the controller of Radio 4, has written about Radio 4's coverage of 9/11 on the blog, where you can find out more and leave a comment.

Paul Murphy is editor of the Radio blog

Today we are making public a report which looks at potential synergies and savings within Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music and 1Xtra.

Last year, I asked John Myers - CEO of the Radio Academy and one of the most respected figures in the radio industry - to review how our popular music stations are run and how they work together. The key challenge was to identify possible ways of sensibly reducing costs while protecting the quality of our programmes.

The findings of the report will help us with our current planning as we look to save costs. John's extensive experience in commercial radio meant he could take an informed and objective view of our operations.

He spent six weeks in the networks: interviewing, observing and generally digging around. He was given unrestricted access and met people at all levels of the organisation.

We welcome John's broadly positive report and its acknowledgement of the distinctive, high quality services we offer. It is very good to read John's praise of the outstanding people who work at the radio stations.

Importantly, the report recognises that BBC stations have to deliver against detailed service licences which require significant resources and lead to distinct challenges to those producing commercial radio. In John's words, attempting to simply compare the demands on BBC and Commercial Radio is meaningless: "akin to comparing apples and oranges".

However, this doesn't mean that we can't and shouldn't learn from external best practice - this is the very reason that I commissioned the review. The report has some valuable insights and recommendations which have been fed into our discussions around Delivering Quality First (DQF) - the BBC name for the work that is underway to develop a plan for the period of the next Licence Fee settlement.

While it is too early to speculate on specific outcomes (which would all require BBC Trust approval), our commitment to principles such as simplifying the organisation, reducing unnecessary compliance processes and finding new ways of working has already been stated in public.

Helpfully, John has identified some clear areas where we can look to do things more efficiently, such as improving co-ordination and reducing unnecessary duplication where appropriate.

Just like any big organisation, there are always ways of doing things better and BBC radio should continue to demonstrate that it is brilliant value for money. I want to achieve this while ensuring that we do not see a dilution in quality or a reduction in clear station leadership which is at the heart of our editorial success. This will mean better value for Licence Fee payers while not threatening the programmes that listeners love.

Tim Davie is Director of Audio & Music

• Download John Myers' report as a PDF: john_myers_report_june_2011.pdf
• Read The Telegraph story: BBC enlists commercial sector help to shake up radio from 28th November 2010.

Editor's note: BBC Radio production staff cover many music awards ceremonies every year. Sometimes they get to visit the lectern themselves - SB.

The Country Music Association (CMA) awards have given me many of my most treasured work memories... being transported by golf cart to interview country legend George Jones on his tour bus... bumping into Willie Nelson and Garth Brooks at the same time backstage... driving through Nashville in Raul Malo's vintage Cadillac. But last year was extra special for me when I was unexpectedly presented with the Wesley Rose International Media Achievement award "For Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement and Promotion of Country Music Internationally." My very own CMA award! And in that moment all those years of ridicule for loving Tammy Wynette and Line Dancing were suddenly worth it!

What's easy to forget is, although Country music is perceived as a specialist genre over here, in the USA it is massive and country stars are huge celebrities, filling the tabloids, the reality TV shows and selling out 60,000 seater stadiums. And the buzz, hype and glamour around the CMA awards night reflects this. This is a night of big hair, bit hats, big dresses and big money, and Nashville embraces it with a passion.

Last year, for the first time, Dale Winton hosted Radio 2's CMA highlights show. I've been working on Radio 2's coverage of the awards for the last ten years, and producing the shows for the last five with several different presenters including Nick Barraclough, Bob Harris and Paul Sexton. Dale's approach was 100% enthusiasm for the music. Mainstream country pop is one of his many musical passions, and the fact that he spends so much time in America means he knows exactly what's going on in the country world. His excitement at being in Nashville for the first time was pretty infectious and I found myself looking at the whole experience with fresh eyes.

Our priority on CMA awards night is always to interview as many winners and performers as possible and it helps that, as a production team, we are so flexible and self-contained - i.e. there's just the two of us! For our whole time out there the team is literally me, Dale and a portable recorder. For the awards we're based in a tiny booth backstage alongside press and media from all around the world, and last year Dale was on top form - talking to Brad Paisley about Jeremy Clarkson and Top Gear, chatting to country legend Barbara Mandrell about her cats and showing off an encyclopaedic knowledge of the country charts. All this plus some one on one interview time with two of his (and my) favourite women of all time - Dolly Parton and Reba McEntire, and a chance to try on some Rhinestone studded jackets made by the famous Nashville tailor Manuel. Why take Dale Winton if you can't make the most of country music's camp possibilities!

When the Awards show wraps at 10pm, that's when my work really starts and for the next 24 hours I'm imprisoned in my make-shift editing suite in my hotel room....editing, mixing, structuring the show and writing Dale's script (which he then adapts and personalises in his own inimitable style). On Friday afternoon we decamp to Audio Productions Studios on Nashville's Music row where we put the final touches to the show, call up London and at 4pm Nashville time we get ready to roll.

You can hear the results on Dale's Best of the CMAs which goes out on Radio 2 at 2200 on Friday 12th November.

Al Booth is producer of Radio 2's CMA coverage

• The picture shows Al collecting her CMA Award. From left to right: CMA International Consultant Bobbi Boyce, Al Booth, CMA Board Member Victoria Shaw, and CMA Senior Manager of Membership & Industry Relations Hank Adam Locklin.
• Dale Winton's CMAs show is on BBC Radio 2 this Friday at 2200.
• The official CMA Awards web site lists the nominees in full - it's going to be a long night.