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25/01/2015

The best of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio this week.

This week we discover that Ewan MacColl and Robert Burns share a birthday, and find out the various ways people have of commemorating their dead; from Churchill's simple grave in Bladon, to the oak tree planted for MacColl in Russell Square. We investigate the secret life of sperm donors - and of Robert Burns - and explore what happens to secrets when they explode. Plus more to celebrate with Ivor Cutler, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Karinne Polwort. But watch out, parents, when you have parties for your five-year-olds...

45 minutes

Last on

Sun 25 Jan 2015 18:15

Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay
Born in Edinburgh in 1961, Jackie grew up wanting to be an actress, inspired by Scottish artist and writer Alasdair Gray. Jackie went on to study English at the University of Stirling; her first publication, The Adoption Papers in 1991, won the Saltire Scottish First Book Award. This became the first of many, followed by the 1994 Somerset Maugham Award for Other Lovers and the Guardian First Book Award Fiction Prize for Trumpet. The story was based on the life of US jazz musician Bill Tipton, born Dorothy Tipton, who lived as a man for 50 years.Β 
Jackie went on to write for screen and children. Lamplighter explored the Atlantic slave trade and was broadcast on Radio 3 in 2007 and published in poetry form in 2008. Having been adopted as a young child, Jackie wrote about the search for her biological parents in her 2010 book, Red Dust Road. Jackie was awarded a MBE in 2006 and now resides in Manchester. In October 2014, Jackie was nominated as Chancellor of the University of Salford.

Broadcast

  • Sun 25 Jan 2015 18:15