Showing results by narrator "Ben Watt" in All Categories

In the summer of 1992, on the eve of an American tour, Ben Watt, one half of the Billboard-topping pop duo Everything but the Girl, was taken to a London hospital complaining of chest pain. He didn't leave for two and a half months.

Driven by a desire to break free from his mediocre, middle-class existence and escape the Belfast (IRA) “Troubles” of the 70’s, Chris Donaldson strikes out on his café racing Moto Guzzi on a cross-country roadtrip of self-discovery. But when the Iranian revolution stops the planned motorcycle trip to Australia, he switches gears and begins a 33-country, 50,000-mile odyssey across Europe, Asia, and the Americas including 10,000 miles on an ocean-going racing yacht.

Ben Watt’s father was a working-class Glaswegian jazz musician - a politicized left-wing bandleader and composer - whose heyday in the late 1950s took him into the glittering heart of London’s West End. His mother, Romany, the daughter of a Methodist parson, was a Shakespearean actress who had triplets in her first marriage before becoming a leading showbiz feature writer and columnist in the ’60s and ’70s. They were both divorced and from very different backgrounds, and they came together at a fateful New Year’s Day party in 1957 like colliding trains.

As Chief Executive of her local council, Robyn has just days to stop recycling being wiped from her ambitious environmental plans. But the credit crunch continues to put pressure on other priorities. Meanwhile, her daughter, Afrah, provides a safe house for a fiercely committed environmentalist from Eastern Europe. Written by D. J. Britton and starring Lesley Sharp, Anamaria Marinca, Lizzy Watts, Sam Dale, Ben Askew, Stephen Hogan, and Philip Fox. Produced by Pam Marshall.