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AA: America's Gift to the World

2015-04-01T13:36:32+00:00

AL Kennedy's new Radio 4 documentary - America's Gift to the World - tells the story of Alcoholics Anonymous and its methods, and asks whether AA is still the best 'cure' for addicts given new science and treatments. This is the background to the story, and how the making of the programme impacted on its presenter.

The initials AA are peripherally familiar to many, as is perhaps the name Alcoholics Anonymous. Nevertheless, I think a lot of people don’t know much about AA or the story of its creation – when Bill Wilson, an alcoholic wall street trader with a big idea about staying sober, met an alcoholic doctor, Bob Smith. They talked and understood each other, helped each other get sober and worked out a way they could pass that on. I’ve seen friends ruin their own lives and those of all around them through dysfunctional drinking: the idea of two people finding a way to unravel that nightmare is truly beautiful and fascinating.

AA’s desire to preserve its members' privacy and to make no grand statements on issues, meant we had to be sensitive about interviews. It’s also probably one reason why AA isn’t well-known outside its membership. AA’s also an intentionally disorganised organisation. I loved looking at a huge association which seems to do exactly what it intends and yet which is specifically engineered to concentrate power and responsibility downwards and to avoid creating authority figures, funding drives, advertising drives and so forth. It seems to reverse modern thinking about success, but has millions of members, has lasted 80 years and still rolls on.

With so many products and experiences now designed to exert an addictive or pseudo-addictive influence, I suppose AA pushes against some powerful trends in society. As was pointed out during my research, alcohol use is central to many of our social occasions, celebrations, even some religious ceremonies. Anyone trying to stay away from drink isn’t going to have it easy. AA isn’t for everyone, but it seems to work very well for those who do use it.

What I was struck by most of all was the generosity, honesty and compassion of all our contributors. We have hours of wonderful stories and insights that we just couldn’t fit into the programme. The professionals we spoke to were genuinely passionate about trying to understand alcoholism and help alcoholics to recover. AA members were searingly frank about themselves – and very funny - and really had a grip on who they were and how they could meet the world. We also interviewed Al-Anon and Alateen members – those affected by the drinking of others. Their experiences and bravery were startling, humbling. It was really a privilege to meet them all.

America's Gift to the World is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on Monday 6 April.

Boy Racers: From Karting to Formula One

2011-05-30T11:29:00+00:00

Editor's note: While Lewis Hamilton might be in the news today for the wrong reasons, Boy Racers - available to listen to on the Radio 4 website for the next seven days - follows the same arduous path to the top that Hamilton took and hears from some of the drivers looking to become the stars of tomorrow. (PM)

Britain has a long and successful association with motorsport and Formula One in particular, boasting champions such as Jackie Stewart, Nigel Mansell and Lewis Hamilton.

For someone who passed their driving test five years ago - and hasn't driven since - I wanted to find out how someone becomes a professional racing driver and why they want to drive round and round a track at eye-watering high speeds for a job.

There are many routes to F1, but most young drivers start out in karting, initially as a hobby encouraged by their fathers. I found seventeen year old Alex Lynn and eighteen year old Oliver Rowland, through the British Racing Drivers' Club Superstars scheme, a mentoring programme for up and coming drivers.

Having made the transition from karts to cars, both are in the early stages of their professional racing career, with the ultimate goal being Formula One World Champion. Team-mates - and rivals - they compete in the same category: Formula Renault UK, the same route that Lewis Hamilton followed.

I first met the boys in March at a testing session early one misty morning at Rockingham circuit in Corby, Northamptonshire. This is part of the training before the first race weekend of the season at Brands Hatch in Kent.

Never having been to a race track or seen any sort of live motorsport, I wasn't sure what to expect. The cars, which are like smaller versions of F1 vehicles, were lined up from the various teams. Each car costs sixty thousand pounds and has two mechanics that spend all day tweaking the engines, hoping to make the car go that all important hundredth of a second faster.

Training is gruelling - hours are spent in the gym - drivers need to be fit enough to be able to turn the steering wheel at high speeds and also maintain their weight so they can fit into the small cars. Most of their time is spent travelling up and down the country to various training facilities, working closely with the team to improve the car, as well as psychological and media training.

The noise at Brands Hatch, cars zooming past at 150mph, and competitive atmosphere creates an exhilarating event, and the appeal of the sport became clearer. What struck me and my presenter Aasmah Mir most, was the complete dedication to training and driving. For the mechanics, drivers and their families, motor racing is a way of life. When talking to Alex and Oliver about their desire to win - the love of driving instantly comes across and their eyes light up at the thought of competing.

Formula One only has 24 drivers, so competition is tough, but after watching these two teenagers, I reckoned one of them might just have what it takes to make it.

Tamsin Barber is the producer of Boy Racers.

Listen to Boy Racers, available for the next seven days on the Radio 4 website.
Watch highlights of the Monaco Grand Prix on the BBC Sport website.
View the calendar for the rest of the Formula One season.

Radio 4 at the Sony Awards

2011-05-10T15:36:00+00:00

It was the Sony Radio Academy Awards last night ("the radio industry's equivalent of the Oscars"). Here's where you can hear this year's gold winners from Radio 4 which were cunningly rescheduled into some of the station's repeat slots when the nominees were announced.

The winner of the best speech programme award was Infinite Monkey Cage which we've featured on the blog before. The new series starts on BBC Radio 4, Monday May 30th at 4.30pm (repeated on Tuesday evenings at 11pm) for 6 weeks. In the meantime you can listen to some earlier episodes via the Radio 4 podcast page.

Matthew Price won news journalist of the year for his work for Radio 4. You can listen to one of his recent reports on the Syrian protests.

The winner of the best feature was Heel, Toe, Step Together made by Falling Tree. Heel, Toe, Step Together (pictured above, Bob Hill) "tells the story of two people who met at an East London market one day and the unlikely friendship that blossomed through dance" and you can listen to it again at 13.30 this Sunday, the 15th May on Radio 4 and for seven days after that on iPlayer.

For the judges the winner of best drama Every Child Matters is a story that "drew them in whilst portraying the reality of the contradictions, conflicts and complexities facing the professional staff working in child protection". You can hear Every Child Matters this Thursday at 14.15 and for seven days after that on iPlayer.

Jenni Murray won the gold award, a 'special award that lies within the gift of the Committee'. This is what the Guardian said:

'On a night when female winners were thin on the ground, Radio 4's Woman's Hour presenter Jenni Murray received the prestigious gold award. The judges said it rewarded a "career of exemplary broadcasting, for her incisive yet sensitive interviewing skills, her championship of the woman's perspective and the inspiration she has given to others".'

On this Thursday's Woman's Hour Jenni Murray talks to Kate McCann about the ongoing search for her daughter.

Paul Murphy is the acting editor of the Radio 4 blog

Follow Radio 4 on Twitter or see a full list of Radio 4 accounts on Twitter
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On the 5live blog you can listen to some of 5live's winning submissions and read 7 Sony Gold Awards for 5 live

Schedule Change: Aung San Suu Kyi

2010-11-12T18:44:07+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sq2n1

Aung San Suu Kyi's extraordinary life as a quiet prisoner in her own country is the subject of this Radio 4 special programme presented by Mike Wooldridge. Mike hears from her friends and colleagues who speak frankly about her experience and how she has kept her spirit alive after so many years in isolation fighting for democracy. We are rebroadcasting the programme tonight at 11pm following the Burmese elections and speculation about her future.

Gwyneth Williams is Controller of BBC Radio 4 and Radio 7

Listen to Mike Wooldridge's profile on the Radio 4 web site.

profile of Aung San Suu Kyi

On Woman's Hour this morning, Jenni Murray was joined by BBC Foreign Correspondent Sue Lloyd Roberts and by historian Justin Wintle to discuss Aung San Suu Kyi's role in Burma in the light of the recent elections.
The picture shows supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi protesting outside the Chinese Embassy in London in 2007. It's by lewishamdreamer and is used under licence.

Crossing Continents is back

2009-11-27T13:15:55+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qt55

The message on my voicemail was garbled. Not surprising perhaps, as the producer was speaking over a dodgy satellite phone connection and was not in the calmest of moods. Something about the Taleban, risky flights, the Pakistani intelligence services and an 18-hour road trip through the notorious Northwest Frontier Province.

It's this kind of thing that makes the job of editing Crossing Continents interesting. Interesting in the sense of alarming, worrying, nerve-wracking and guilt-inducing. I spend rather a lot of my time sitting in a glass box (not quite an office, more like a goldfish bowl) in White City where nothing very dangerous is likely to happen. Although I suppose you could get a nasty scald from a cup of tea.

Meanwhile I send some of the world's best radio documentary journalists off to some very nasty places indeed. Places where nasty things happen to people, including journalists and their contacts. Earlier this year, presenter Lucy Ash and producer Nick Sturdee went to Chechnya and interviewed a human rights worker, Natalya Estimirova. She took them to a field and showed them where the bodies of some young women had been found. The women had been bundled into cars and then murdered. A few days after the interview, Natalya herself was bundled into a car and murdered. Natalia's colleagues believe she was murdered in retaliation for her many years investigating human rights abuses.

Now I had a producer in one of the remotest bits of Pakistan on the trail of a story that had turned very weird. Nothing had gone according to plan. Promised permits had not turned up. An institution they wanted to visit had been blown up by the Pakistani military. Helpful associates proved to have dubious connections. Intelligence agents wanted to take away the recordings. And here I was in my glass box, trying to make sure that my producer got back safely.

Luckily I had a security blanket. A detailed risk assessment - a score of pages long - which the producer had compiled with help from the BBC's high risk team (an amazing bunch), the Islamabad Bureau, the head of the World Service's Urdu service and some streetwise BBC contacts on the ground. I carried the risk assessment with me everywhere in my backpack. The official reason was to keep the emergency numbers in case I needed to ring them. The real reason is that it's a talisman.

And I reminded myself that the producer had wanted to go. She'd found the story she was pursuing and she knew that she was under no pressure from me. If she wanted to ditch the project and bail out at any time, she had carte blanche to do so. And we had procedures in place for the producer to call and text both me and the Islamabad office. I thought back to our series of detailed conversations over several months about the practicality and safety of the project - and how we'd talked it over forwards and backwards here in the goldfish bowl.

So despite the garbled message I calmed down. And I'm happy to say the producer is now back in the UK. Now another team is on location in another potentially dangerous part of the world. And I'm carrying their risk assessment around with me in my backpack again.

Hugh Levinson is producer of Crossing Continents

Crossing Continents returned last week with The Congo Connection. Peter Greste investigates a ruthless militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is controlled by political leaders living in freedom in Europe. Listen again here.
The picture, Karakoram Highway (Pakistan 1999) is by Bianca and is used under licence.