The Radio 4 Blog Feed

The Manhattan Bee Testimonials

2013-03-20T14:40:43+00:00

In search of the New York Bee Man - listen to the Radio 4 afternoon docu-drama, The Manhattan Bee Testimonials, from 27 March 2013.

NY Walk sign covered in bees

To be honest, as a documentary maker going to another country to record stories, it's normally pretty scary. Will the contributors give you what you want? Will the story 'work'? It's even more scary when you're making a programme about someone who may not exist.

Mark is a Brooklyn chef where the bee-man has long been used as a story to scare children.

I first heard about the Manhattan Bee Man from the writer, Sebastian Baczkiewicz who found out about him from Tom Waits. According to the story, this guy lives with 250,000 bees in his apartment and is completely oblivious to the discomfort. I too was perplexed. And yet when you tell the anecdote to New Yorkers, they find it believable, hilarious and all too often, familiar.

Manhattan - New York

Our brief was to go there and find him, or at least, find people who have heard of him and record them. Their voices would appear in the programme, and their testimonies would inform the arc of the narrative, or something… Our lovely exec, Polly Thomas told us to follow our hunches, which led us to Hell's Kitchen, a psychic's parlour, a record shop, a poetry church, a farmers market, the oldest brothel on the island, Otto's Shrunken Head, Stuyvesant Town, the Double Down Saloon, and lots of other places you'll hear in this piece. We also paid a visit to Beth Israel hospital.

Cooper, a musician lives in Harlem, where he claims to know the Bee-man's family.

This is the story of the search for the Manhattan Bee Man. It's also about Alphabet City, and the truly amazing people who live and have lived there. Enjoy.

We visited Central Park to find anyone who had heard of the mysterious bee man.

Listen to The Manhattan Bee Testimonials

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The Greatest City Debate

2010-07-12T07:30:00+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t5l7f

The #GreatestCity debate took place this morning at 0900 and hundreds of you joined in here on the blog, on Twitter and on Facebook. Four World Cities squared up for the big fight. Laurie Taylor chaired, four city lovers made the case for their favourites - London, Mumbai, New York and Istanbul - and an audience in the Radio Theatre (in the heart of London, it goes without saying) decided. And the winner was Mumbai.

You can now 'replay' the chat while listening to the programme on the iPlayer.

And once you've listened, please do us a favour and leave a comment on this blog post (using your BBC login) to tell us what you thought of the chat and the programme.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

Listen to the Greatest Cities Debate at 0900 this morning and to the other programmes from the season on the London: Another Country page.
City Pictures: New York, by Dhilung Kirat (licence); Istanbul, by Tim O'Brien (licence); Mumbai, by Danial Chitnis (licence); London, by Dimitry B (licence) and Cobbles, by Ogoco (licence).

Four World Cities - which is greatest?

2010-07-11T10:19:19+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t5l7f

Laurie Taylor wants to know which of these four cities is the planet's greatest: Istanbul, Mumbai, New York or London. The big debate is on Radio 4 tomorrow morning (Monday 12 July) at 0900 but we want your opinion now. Leave a comment here on the blog or tweet using the hashtag #GreatestCity, then - here's the important bit - come back to the blog during the programme and join a live chat with other listeners and contributors to the London Season (we're hoping, for instance, that London expert Tony Travers from LSE will be able to join us). See you there!

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

Listen to the Greatest Cities Debate at 0900 tomorrow morning and to the other programmes from the season on the London: Another Country page.
The picture is a press photo of Scutari in Istanbul during the early twentieth century, from the Library of Congress collection via the Wikimedia Commons.