Loose Ends

Joining Stuart for this week's Loose Ends are actor Nigel Havers, who tells us about his remarkable shepherd's pies and the sex appeal of Mrs Thatcher.
Comedy writer and performer Rosalie Minnitt on how dreaming of cows and seeing moonlit owls doesn't bode terribly well.
Comedian Mike Wozniak on how a luxuriant moustache can help balance out an underdeveloped lower face.
And there's music from Dan Gillespie Sells, performing a song by his band The Feeling, and Liverpool's electro-pop trio Stealing Sheep, with their track GLO.
Presenter: Stuart Maconie
Producer: Elizabeth Foster

Stuart Maconie's tiptoeing the line between dark and light in this week's Loose Ends.
When she won Strictly Jill Halfpenny got the highest ever score for her sequin studded jive, but there's not a glitterball to be seen in her latest role as the traumatised mum Eve in the dark psychological thriller Girl Taken, which also stars Alfie Allen as the creepiest teacher you'd never hope to meet.
Ian Smith is a comedian who mines his own anxieties for his art - be that his Radio 4 series called "Ian Smith is Stressed", the unintentionally hilarious news from his hometown in the Northern News Podcast or his new tour, "Footspa Half Empty".
The comic, actor and Dead Ringers impressionist Jess Robinson's very funny and also very sad new memoir contrasts her own twentysomething exploits as a stage ingenue with her Jewish Grandmother's diaries at the same age - Life Is Rosi: Grandma, Me and Our Diaries at 23. Grandma Rosi loved music, boyfriends and having a laugh too but was enduring Germany during the rise of Hitler at the same time.
And as they head out on tour, we have performance from The Charlatan's new album We Are Love.
Producer: Olive Clancy
Assistant Producer: Samuel Nixon
Technical Producers: John Cole and Mark Ward
Production Coordintor: Pete Liggins

Joining Stuart Maconie for this week's Loose Ends are Professor Alice Roberts with her book Domination, which takes a deep dig into the heart of the Roman Empire.
Comedian and poet Rob Auton is about to tour with his show CAN: The Story of a Man Called Can...he's here to tell us all he can about that.
Actor Amir El-Masry is starring in the new film Giant as the boxer Prince Naseem Hamed, and he joins Loose Ends to talk technique, training and working with Pierce Brosnan and Sylvester Stallone.
The comedian Esther Manito drops into the studio mid-tour to bring her humorous take on what she calls a "very undignified period of life".
And there's music from Cast who are about to release their new album Yeah Yeah Yeah at the end of January.
Presenter: Stuart Maconie
Producer: Elizabeth Foster

Clive Anderson is joined in Glasgow by broadcaster and author Sally Magnusson, whose latest novel breathes new life into stories told to her as a child by her Icelandic father. She brings together modern day Orkney and the Norse myth of Hel in The Shapeshifter's Daughter.
In 2017 Ray Bradshaw became the first comedian to perform simultaneously in English and in sign language. In his upcoming tour CODA, he returns to tales of his parents and the experience of growing up as A Child of Deaf Adults.
Grado has many a feather in his cap - wrestler, Two Doors Down star, presenter - and he is currently brightening up panto season in Jock and the Beanstalk (oh no he isn't!).
Plus music from Nathan Evans x SAINT PHNX, and Mairi Campbell.
Presenter: Clive Anderson
Producer: Caitlin Sneddon

There's plenty of festive energy left with Stuart Maconie and guests in the Loose Ends twixtmas studio:
Taskmaster champion Maisie Adams tells us how she got in touch with her previously hidden competition-demon on the show, her highly-flammable competition outfit and that nailbiting finish, as well as revving up for a new tour in 2026.
ITV's hit drama Red Eye is back for a second season on New Year's Day and its star Jing Lusi tells us about reprising her role as the kickboxing DI Hanna Li. She thinks DI Li would not approve of her penchant for Romcoms and fitness avoidance.
And Radio 3's Elizabeth Alker outlines how rock and pop musicians from The Beatles to Radiohead to Manic Street Preachers owe a debt to classical music with tales from her new book Everything We Do Is Music. She also has tales of her rockstar Yorkshire terrier Terry who rules the roost at her house in December and well, all year round really.
Plus inspiring music for the turning of the year from Thea Gilmore and from Carly Mercedes Dyer singing You Are My Lucky Star from the musical Singing in the Rain.
Producer: Olive Clancy
Assistant producer: Sam Nixon
Technical producers: John Cole & John Benton
Production coordinator: Pete Liggins