Programme Information

Richard Madeley sits in for Zoe Ball and is joined by Ambrose Heron to discuss the latest releases. Films under the spotlight this week include Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, in which Clint Eastwood directs the true story of South Africa's team in the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

The latest DVD releases up for review include Pixar's masterpiece, Up, and Eric Bana in an adaptation of best-selling book The Time Traveller's Wife.

Presenter/Richard Madeley, Producer/Mark Simpson

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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Brian Matthew presents the programme for all fans of the music of the Sixties.

Today, When I Get Home from the album A Hard Day's Night is the featured Beatles track in The A-Z Of The Beatles.

This week's programme also includes a look at one of Cliff Richard's four-track vinyl releases which featured in the dedicated EP charts for Brian's The EP Collection. Other artists featured this week include Vanity Fair, Elvis, Love Affair, Aphrodite's Child and Bill Oddie.

Presenter/Brian Matthew, Producer Phil Swern

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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Natalie Merchant and Grammy Award-nominee Joan Armatrading MBE are Bob Harris's After Midnight acoustic session guests this week.

American singer-songwriter and 10,000 Maniacs founder Natalie Merchant has recorded some new session tracks from her recent album project, Leave Your Sleep, as well as a selection of old favourites. Bob features one, each Saturday, over the next few weeks.

British singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading is the first female UK artist to have debuted at No. 1 in the Billboard blues charts and she is also the first female UK artist to be nominated for a Grammy in the blues category. Joan is one of Britain's leading female artists who has made her mark with songs like Love And Affection, Willow, Drop The Pilot and Lovers Speak. She makes a rare solo acoustic appearance tonight and talks about her latest album and tour.

Presenter/Bob Harris, Producer/Mark Simpson

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

Opera On 3 – Live From The Met: Simon Boccanegra

Saturday 6 February

6.00-9.45pm BBC RADIO 3

Plácido Domingo stars in the title role of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra

Live from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, Plácido Domingo stars in the title role of Simon Boccanegra, Verdi's compelling tale of 14th-century Genoese power-politics, illegitimacy and forbidden love.

Plácido Domingo makes history as he takes on Simon Boccanegra, one of the great baritone roles of the repertoire. Bass James Morris plays his nemesis, Jacopo Fiesco.

James Levine conducts the Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera.

Margaret Juntwait presents, with guest commentator Ira Siff, and the programme includes backstage interviews and the Met Quiz during the intervals.

Presenter/Margaret Juntwait, Producer/David Papp

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Rory Kinnear stars in this dark fantasy by Alan Harris about two men striving to be warriors in an atomised world. Terry has two lives; he is a clerk in a Cardiff law firm and a warrior in an online game. However, are his lives starting to converge?

He only moved to Wales to be close to oblivious colleague Sally, and now he's lonely, alienated and beginning to get things out of proportion. But, online, Terry is Tork Thunderbolt, a warrior in the Kingdom of Dragons.

His best friend is Greyhawk, a fellow gamer. But Greyhawk is hiding a shameful secret. And that's not the only surprise waiting to derail Terry's delicate grasp on reality.

Producer/Abigail le Fleming

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Ramblings Ep 1/6

Saturday 6 February

6.00-6.30am BBC RADIO 4

In a new series of Ramblings, Clare Balding discovers the joys of group walking and hears why people come together to enjoy the countryside.

Today, Clare meets the "Bradford Grammar School Parents" and joins them on their silver jubilee walk.

For 25 years, a group of Yorkshire friends have been meeting, every few months, for a hike through the countryside of northern England.

The group first met as anxious parents watching their sons play rugby at Bradford Grammar School. When their sons left home they decided to keep in touch by organising regular rambles. Since then, the walkers have helped each other through much that life has thrown at them, using the healing powers of friendship, stunning landscapes and a good, bracing walk.

Clare meets up with the group as they tackle one of their favourite routes, across the horse-racing furlongs of Middleham in Wensleydale.

Next week, Clare meets the Walking The Land group of artists for a stroll near the beautiful Slad Valley outside Stroud.

Presenter/Clare Balding, Producer/Lucy Lunt

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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A food writer and presenter of BBC Two's Cooking In The Danger Zone, Stefan Gates has a strange claim to fame. At the age of four, he and his seven-year-old sister appeared on the gatefold album cover of Led Zeppelin's 1973 rock classic, Houses Of The Holy. For the first time, he investigates the story behind this iconic image.

It's a famously unsettling image. Stefan and his sister, Samantha, appear naked, climbing up the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. The image has dogged Stefan all his life. Ever since he was a child, the picture has disturbed him, even scared him, and he has always shied away from it.

Every year, he gets a handful of calls from fans and writers wanting to know about the picture, but he doesn't know much himself. Like many other music fans, he has held the album and stared at it, trying to work it out. But Stefan has never got beyond the cover. He has purposely never looked into the story behind it or the people who put it together – and has never even listened to the record.

In this programme Stefan revisits that chapter in his life, for the first time, as he sets out to confront his own mixed emotions about it. He tells the story behind the image, its ideas and ethics, as well as the difficulties in making it. He meets Aubrey Powell, the designer and photographer of the cover art, from famous graphic design team Hipgnosis.

Finally, he journeys back to the Giant's Causeway itself to listen to the album for the very first time.

Presenter/Stefan Gates, Producer/Russell Finch

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Saturday 6 February

12.00noon-7.20pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Mark Pougatch presents an afternoon of live sport from Twickenham on the opening day of the 2010 Six Nations Championship.

At 12.45pm, there's live commentary of the Merseyside derby, as Liverpool take on Everton at Anfield.

There's also coverage of the afternoon's 3pm football matches, including Hull City versus Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers versus Fulham in the Premier League, plus reports from the fifth round of the Scottish Cup. There are also updates from the opening game of the 2010 Six Nations Championship as the 2009 champions Ireland take on Italy at Croke Park, Dublin, with a kick-off at 2.30pm.

From 5pm, there's live commentary of England's opening Six Nations match against Wales, with Ian Robertson and Alastair Eykyn and expert analysis from Matt Dawson and Rob Jones.

At 6.45pm, there's second-half commentary of the Premier League's late kick-off, Tottenham versus Aston Villa, live, from White Hart Lane.

Presenter/Mark Pougatch, Producer/Mark Williams

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Rugby Union

Saturday 6 February

2.15-4.15pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Listeners can enjoy uninterrupted commentary of the opening game of the 2010 Six Nations Championship, as the 2009 champions, Ireland, take on Italy, live, from Croke Park.

Expert analysis comes from former Ireland winger, Denis Hickie.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

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Football

Saturday 6 February

5.25-7.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Uninterrupted Premier League commentary of Tottenham Hotspur versus Aston Villa comes, live, from White Hart Lane.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

Ministry of Sound DJ and George Lamb sidekick Marc Hughes kicks off his first 6 Mix of 2010 with a selection of uplifting house classics and brand new tech house from club land.

Marc is a Ministry of Sound resident DJ, a role which has taken him as far afield as Russia and China. He digs in his box to play classics from the likes of Masters At Work, as well as future beats from around the world.

Marc also takes a ride on the disco train, for 40 minutes of pure glitter-ball pleasure.

Presenter/Marc Hughes, Producer/Rowan Collinson

BBC 6 Music Publicity

Under the spotlight in World Book Club this month is writer Andrea Levy who talks about her acclaimed novel Small Island.

Winner of the UK's Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, the Orange Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Small Island is a heart-warming and thought-provoking tale of love, friendship and immigration set in London during and after the Second World War.

It focuses on the diaspora of Jamaican immigrants, who, escaping economic hardship on their own "small island," move to England, the "Mother Country", for which the men have fought during the Second World War.

Told through the intertwining stories of three very different characters, the reception offered by an exhausted post-war Britain is not quite the warm embrace that they'd hoped for.

Producer/Karen Holden

BBC World Service Publicity