Programme Information

Jamie Cullum continues to showcase his love for all types of jazz, and music rooted in jazz, from its heritage to the future. This week's show features a Maida Vale session with multi Grammy winner, songwriter, vocalist and conductor Bobby McFerrin.

Best known for his hit songs Don't Worry Be Happy and Thinkin' About Your Body, the talented vocalist performs a selection of his works a cappella, creating the entire accompaniment with his mouth. Listeners can expect some new material and some classic songs.

Jamie also presents his usual blend of jazz standards, alternative album tracks by known artists and new music from the current scene.

Presenter/Jamie Cullum, Producer/Karen Pearson

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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BBC 6 Music presenter Guy Garvey finds out about The Beatles' Let It Be

To mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Let It Be, Elbow front-man and BBC 6 Music presenter Guy Garvey tells the story of the fractious and often bitter sessions that documented the demise of the popular culture icons of the Sixties, The Beatles.

Featuring contributions from many of those who worked on the Let It Be sessions, including director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, engineer Alan Parsons, photographer Ethan Russell, author Richard DiLello and engineers Dave Harries and Brian Gibson, this programme explains how a project (originally a TV documentary, titled Get Back, which was designed to re-energise the band and capture their stripped down rock 'n' roll roots), instead documented power struggles, bickering and conflict.

The project was perhaps doomed from the start. Paul McCartney's original suggestion was for the group to play three shows, which he hoped would refocus and invigorate the band after the tensions experienced during the recording of the White Album. When this plan failed to materialise, the idea evolved into a worldwide broadcast of a live concert.

Paul decided that the rehearsals should be filmed for a documentary that would promote the live broadcast and they began at Twickenham Studios on 2 January 1969. Everyone involved in the rehearsals considered them to be disastrous.

The intrusive film cameras and the cold, unfamiliar setting of Twickenham Studios contributed to the ill feeling. George announced that he was leaving the band and went to Eric Clapton's house, where he wrote Here Comes The Sun, but within a few days he was persuaded to return to the group.

After three weeks of filming, the band were still unable to agree on a location for the proposed concert, so Michael Lindsay-Hogg suggested they stage an impromptu performance on the rooftop of their Apple headquarters. The live performance took place on 30 January in front of a small audience of friends and employees but was stopped by the police after complaints about noise. Filming continued the following day and then no further work was carried out on the project until March, when John and Paul called engineer Glyn Johns to EMI and offered him free rein to produce an album from the recordings.

John booked time at Olympic Studios to mix the album and presented it to the group at the end of May. Originally intended for release in July 1969, it was pushed back to September, to coincide with the TV special and film about the making of the album, and then further delayed because the band decided to release Abbey Road instead.

On 15 December, Johns was approached again, but this time with the instruction that the songs match those included in the (as yet unreleased) film. New mixes were prepared but once again rejected. Then in March the following year the session tapes were given to American producer Phil Spector, who worked on the tracks and compiled Let It Be. By the time the album and the film with the same name were finally released on 8 May 1970, The Beatles had broken up.

Guy Garvey's BBC 6 Music show can be heard on Sunday nights at 10pm.

Presenter/Guy Garvey, Producer/Des Shaw

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

Russian conductor Valery Gergiev

The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev perform Debussy's L'après midi d'un faune, two symphonies by Stravinsky and the première of James MacMillan's Violin Concerto, with Vadim Repin as soloist.

James MacMillan's latest work, a new violin concerto, is performed as part of the orchestra's season-long celebration of the composer's 50th birthday.

Three masterpieces frame the new work: Debussy's enticing Prélude á l'après-midi d'un faune, of which his biographer claimed, when it was written in 1894, "nothing like it existed in music", and two of Stravinsky's greatest neo-classical works – his Symphony in C and the Symphony of Psalms.

Presenter/Ian Skelly, Producer/Anthony Sellors

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

A history of the world, as explained through objects from the British Museum, arrives in North America 2,000 years ago with a stone pipe used in rituals.

It is one of hundreds of pipes shaped as animals that were found in huge mounds in present-day Ohio.

Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, pieces together the evidence for how these pipes were used. Tony Benn and artist Maggie Hambling consider the allure of smoking from a modern perspective, while Native American historian Gabrielle Tayac describes how the pipe formed a central role in traditional ritual and religious life.

Presenter/Neil MacGregor, Producers/Philip Sellars, Paul Kobrak, Anthony Denselow and Jane Lewis

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Every hero worth their salt has a sidekick: Batman had Robin, Quixote had Panza and Holmes his Watson. In Sidekick, presenter Frank Cottrell Boyce finds out that sidekicks are every bit as interesting as the hero.

The sidekick is not, by definition, the focus of attention. They are destined to be overshadowed by their better half – the hero who will save Gotham, solve the uncrackable case or rescue the girl from the bad guys.

But without the sidekick these heroes would often remain too distant, too powerful or just too brilliant for us to ever really love them. So in steps the earthy, flawed and loyal sidekick to provide the audience with someone to connect to; a character who knows how the world really works, to help the hero.

Whether it's in countless children's films, from Eddie Murphy's Donkey to Mike Myers's Shrek, or a hundred comic books and cartoons or high literature – from Cervantes to Sterne and Shakespeare to Verne – the sidekick provides the laughs, the pratfalls and the focus of our empathy.

Frank Cottrell Boyce talks with those who've created sidekicks, those who've played the parts and those who've studied just how essential these characters are in making fiction seem believable and offering a human face to the often inhuman character supposedly at the centre of the show.

Presenter/Frank Cottrell Boyce, Producer/Geoff Bird

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Scorched is Nicola Jones's thriller in which Mike returns home 30 years after his teenage sister's disappearance.

The story follows Mike as he tries to discover what happened to her and begins to wonder if his father is telling the whole truth.

In 1976, Mike's 16-year-old sister, Evie, walked out of the house and never came back. There didn't seem to be any explanation, but Mike was 13 at the time and didn't want to upset his mum by asking too many questions. Now Mike is in his forties, his mum is dead and a rare visit to his home town provides him with an opportunity to investigate the events of that scorching summer and reinterpret them from an adult perspective.

A meeting with an old school friend forces Mike to question his father more closely.

The cast includes Tom Roberts as Mike, Kim Wall as Bern, Gabriel Towell as young Mike, Chandeep Uppal as Evie, Bharti Patel as Sylvia, Robert Wilkinson as Jason and Sean Connolly as the taxi driver.

Producer/Peter Leslie Wild

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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More Actors' Words Ep 1/3

Tuesday 25 to Thursday 27 May

3.30-3.45pm BBC RADIO 4

Anna Massey tells the story of a young woman finding her way in Fifties bohemian London, part of a series of stories written and read by actors.

More Actors' Words is a second series of stories written and read by three actors. Anna Massey, James Dreyfus and Tracy-Ann Oberman take listeners to three varied worlds.

In the second tale, The Accident, James Dreyfus tells the story of grieving parents on a country estate.

In the third story, Girl On An Island, Tracy-Ann Oberman tells the story of Augustus Caesar's daughter in Imperial Rome.

Readers/Anna Massey, James Dreyfus and Tracy-Ann Oberman, Producer/David Roper

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Karole is 55 years old, a grandmother and a female bouncer. She's spent the last two decades working the doors of some of London's toughest venues, meeting the good, the bad and the punchy.

In Ladies On The Door, Karole describes what it's like for women who work in the world of pub and club security.

With the help of Dr Kate O'Brien, a lecturer in criminology who has also worked as a door supervisor for her research, the programme follows Karole as she searches and manages hundreds of drunk and noisy revellers during an average night on the job.

From scuffles at the door to finding hidden drugs and alcohol, Karole, and security staff like her across the UK, rarely get a quiet night. The programme hears how they handle the increasing menace of drunken girls who "kick off", and reflects on why there has been such an increase in drunkenness and violence among some young women.

Away from the singing, shouting, pushing and shoving, Karole looks back at more than 20 years in door security, how the rules have changed for the people managing the public and how that same public has changed too.

Producer/Russell Crewe

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Viv Anderson, the first black footballer to play for England, champions the life of Arthur Wharton, the first black professional player, in the final episode of this series of Great Lives.

Arthur Wharton was born in Ghana in 1865. He came to England to study, but he very quickly started to gain a reputation as an athlete, winning the 100m in a world record time of 10 seconds. He was a superb all-round athlete, and excelled in football and cricket.

In his career he played for Preston North End, Sheffield United, Rotherham Town, Stalybridge Celtic and Ashton North End. He ended his career at Stockport County in Division Two, and, for the remainder of his working life, he laboured as a colliery haulage hand in the pits.

Wharton came from a middle-class background, but his choice of a life of sport meant that a career in civil service administration was quickly closed to him. He chose to do what he loved to do, but paid a terrible price. As his playing career collapsed, he developed a drink problem, and died a penniless alcoholic.

Presenter/Matthew Parris, Producer/John Byrne

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Micky Flanagan – What Chance Change? Ep 1/4

Tuesday 25 May

6.30-7.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Cockney geezer Micky Flanagan

In his first ever radio series, cockney geezer Micky Flanagan regales listeners with his personal story of how he went from tabloids to broadsheets; from white bread to paninis; from street parties to dinner parties; and from apples and pears to stocks and shares.

Micky charts his journey through stand-up comedy and documentary features which go "behind the scenes" to look at the way in which the people in his life helped him make these transitions and explore the way class shapes peoples' experiences.

Each week's episode focuses on a different decade of Micky's life. Just like Forrest Gump he always seems to have been well placed to observe social changes in British society. In the Seventies – a working class youth in the East End of London – he left school and worked in the fish market, as the East End began to be gentrified. In the wealthier Eighties, when travel abroad was becoming an option for those other than the very rich, Micky moved to New York.

At the dawn of Thatcherism, Micky was an entrepreneur, until Open University broadened his horizons. Micky's shift from the mean streets of the East End to the leafy lanes of Dulwich is a fascinating story, all the better told through Micky's own blend of comedy.

Micky Flanagan – What Chance Change? tells of Micky's journey from working-class boy to middle-class gent – and being caught awkwardly between the two.

Presenter/Micky Flanagan, Producer/Tilusha Ghelani

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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All In The Mind Ep 1/8

Tuesday 25 May

9.00-9.30pm BBC RADIO 4

Claudia Hammond returns with a new series of All In The Mind and looks at what the future holds for mental health care. Users of mental health services also voice their concerns.

Claudia gathers together users of mental health services as well as key professionals in the field, to discuss the issues. With a new Government installed, she explores how ministers will balance demands for improved access to mental health services against pressures for budget cuts to balance the books.

Presenter/Claudia Hammond, Producer/Fiona Hill

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

Mark Pougatch has all the day's sports news and, from 8pm, is joined by special guests to look ahead to next month's World Cup in South Africa.

Presenter/Mark Pougatch, Producer/Patrick Nathenson

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Lauren Laverne is joined by Avi Buffalo for a live session in the BBC 6 Music studios.

The Californian band is made up of singer Avi Zahner-Isenberg, Rebecca Coleman, Arin Fazio and Sheridan Riley, and their eponymous debut album is released this month.

Presenter/Lauren Laverne, Producer/Gary Bales

BBC 6 Music Publicity

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Gideon Coe's archive choices include Japan playing live at the peak of their New Romantic powers in 1981 and sessions from robotic surf-noir outfit Man Or Astroman and Cardiacs spin-off The Sea Nymphs.

Presenter/Gideon Coe, Producer/Mark Sheldon

BBC 6 Music Publicity

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The Live Music Hour features goth superstars The Cure, playing live at Camden Palace in 1985. There are also Peel sessions from Iced Bears in 1986 and The Chameleons in 1981.

Presenter/Chris Hawkins, Producer/Claire Slevin

BBC 6 Music Publicity