Pennine Productions

A-Z of Our Radio Productions

 

A

 

Andy Cave's Expedition Underground: Mountaineer Andy Cave goes underground with the team working on the Thirlmere Aqueduct, an extraordinary Victorian system using only gravity to carry water for 94 miles from the Lake District to a million homes in Manchester.

Apprentice to the Past: a four-part series celebrating four of Britain's ancient trades - pargeting, flint-knapping, willow basket-making, and canal lock engineering.

A weekly business podcast, Ask the Expert, broadcast from October 2007 to March 2008. Ask the Expert was recorded around the North West, to bring ITC information and inspiration to small and medium businesses. Listen to it on www.theoutbox.co.uk

 

B

 

The Baronet and Tissington’s Fight for Survival: A behind-the-scenes profile of Sir Richard FitzHerbert and his family home, the 400-year-old Tissington Hall in Derbyshire. And an exploration of the difficulties faced by some historic house owners as they fight to stay in residence.

Being Yourself: What's in a name? Well, an identity for a start. So how does it feel to discover other people called after you - or, at least, sharing your birth name?

Bella Hardy Goes Home: The award-winning folk singer returns to her home village of Edale in the Peak District to hear the sound of music among Derbyshire's rolling hills and valleys.

Borrowers and Lenders: Stories from the bookshelves, the stacks, the backstage offices and the reading rooms of Birmingham Central Library. Shhh!

 

C

 

Children of the Red Flag: recollections from children of the Blunkett generation of growing up in Sheffield during its days as capital of "the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire".

Children of the Scattered Homes: Clare acts as Dr Watson to Tim Knebel's Sherlock Holmes to track down descendants of children taken away from their parents in the 19th and 20th Centuries and scattered in homes across Sheffield.

Cow Dust Time: a poetic sound portrait of twilight in India, made for BBC Radio 3's prestigious Between the Ears slot.

 

D

 

Dad's Last Tape: An exploration of the different circumstances in which people's life stories are recorded, and the emotions that surface when they are relived.

Dave Brown's New Highway Code: Comedian Dave (Mighty Boosh) Brown drives down Memory Lane to track the history of the Highway Code.

 

E

 

Eat, Pray, Write a Memoir: Poet Ian McMillan, who regularly regales Yorkshire Post readers with tales from his life and times, tells listeners how to write their own life stories.

End of the Line: Poet Roger McGough explores metro and tram lines around Britain, just as Sir John Betjeman did half a century earlier in Metroland.

An Exceptional Dog: Instead of the horse-whisperer, meet the sheepdog-whisperer of the Cumbrain fells...

 

F

 

The First Cuckoo and the Last Swallow, and Return of the Last Cuckoo: how the meticulous private records of amateur nature-watchers around Britain are being collated to provide startling evidence of how our climate is changing.

 

H

 

The Houses That Fall into the Sea: An aural portrait of erosion on the east coast of Yorkshire, for Radio 3's Between the Ears slot.

 

I

 

India Calling, How May I Help You? How call centre workers in India are trained to deal with, and relate to, British customers.

 

L

 

The Lost Art of Churches: Forgotten art in surprising places, churches as galleries...

The Lost Poets of the Raincoat Shop: Ian McMillan traces the remarkable friendship between a Sheffield shop-owner and a poetry-writing former steelworker.

Lucy Mangan's Literary Solutions to the Economy: The Guardian columnist finds answers to the global economic crisis in five unlikely places - including The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Cinderella.

 

M

 

Managing Football: how football players learn to be managers, thanks to a Midlands-based training course.

Manchester Crime Wave, a week-long series of thrillers set in Manchester and written by singer/comedian Mike Harding, Cath Staincliffe, Ann Cleeves, Heidi Thomas and Mandasue Heller.

Meet the Patels: A peek behind the counter of the Indian community traditionally associated with the Asian corner shopkeeper. Today Patels are in all walks of life – and on the annual Rich List. And they like Patels to marry Patels. This programme looks at why.

Merry Christmas, Morris Minor: Journalist and broadcaster Martin Wainwright pays tributre to this classic English car. Peep-peep!

 

N

 

Nancy Storace, Mozart's English Soprano: Soprano Catherine Bott investigates the career and voice of the young London singer who first performed one of Mozart's finest operatic roles - Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro.

Nerves of Steel: a look at Sheffield's regenerating steel industry, forging ahead as a world-class centre for medical instruments and hip and knee joints.

 

P

 

Painted Fabrics: The extraordinary story of a group of disabled ex-servicemen from the First World War, who created beautiful clothing and fabrics for society women (including the then Queen and two princesses) from a self-sufficient community on the outskirts of Sheffield. http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/articles/2008/11/03/painted_fabrics_limited_feature.shtml

Prehistoric Footprints Under the Sand: What footprints in the sand at Formby beach in Lancashire tell us about our prehistoric ancestors.

 

R

 

Rural Rides: Comedian Mark Steel follows in the footsteps of the great English journalist and traveller William Cobbett. Now that every TV 'star' can hitch a free ride around the country and abroad to tell us what they did on their holiday, what would Cobbett have made of such so-called 'travelogues'?

 

S

 

A Sense of Liverpool: A series marking Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture (2008) by looking at the city's contemporary cultural scene through the eyes of five media movers and shakers. Presenters: poet Levi Tafari, photographer Mark McNulty, journalist Angie Sammons, musician Alun Parry, and comedian Brendan Riley.

The Shearing Shore: Life among a rare breed of sheep on the most northerly Orkney island of North Ronaldsay - where the human inhabitants are outnumbered four to one by animals with little demon faces.

Still Angry After All These Years: Stan Barstow, Nell Dunn, Barry Hines, Alan Sillitoe and Ian Clayton standing in for David Storey, look back on the 1960s novels that made their names: A Kind of Loving, Up the Junction, Kes, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life.

The Story of Scrap Metal. With an alarming increase in the number of people stripping lead from church roofs and stealing metal from railway lines, Guardian journalist Martin Wainwright asks why scrap metal is so important. He follows the journey of one piece of scrap, and asks experts what’s being done to stop people from “acting suspiciously on the roof”.

 

T

 

Teatime at Peggy's: The Alice in Wonderland world of the Anglo-Indian community in India.

There's No Women Like Show Women: Life on the fairground, from the female perspective.

Three Nights Drunk and The Market Tup: The last interview with Nigel Hudleston, co-founder with his wife Mary of a unique archive of folk songs from the Yorkshire Dales.

Tosside News: Rural life as seen and reported on by people living on the borders of North Yorkshire and Lancashire, contributing to their very own magazine, Tosside News.

Tony Hawks Gets Lost in the Afternoon: Comedian Tony Hawks investigates how it is that we manage to lose things just minutes after holding them in our hands, or wearing them on our faces.

The Two-Minute Silence: On the 90th anniversary of the Remembrance Day two-minute silence in 2009, five people with personal connections to conflict reflect on what the silence means to them.

 

V

 

Voicing the Piano: Kathryn Stott is among those describing how the piano gets its 'voice'.

For other programmes made between 2000 and Spring 2007, see the Pennine Productions Archive website .