Greg James, host of the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and self-confessed 'proud radio nerd', rummages through the BBC's treasure house of archives, using current stories and listener suggestions as a springboard into the vaults of audio, video, documents and photographs.

21st March 2021 is Census Day in most of the UK. To his surprise, Greg discovers that the census provided remarkably fertile ground for comedy. He revisits a 1971 BBC informational programme for census collectors which features Carry On-style sketches, including one of a bickering husband and wife.

A listener is curious about recordings of hecklers being “dealt with”, which sends Greg on an odyssey of comedians and actors being insulted and political meetings gatecrashed by anarchists.

Black Panther actor Daniel Kaluuya was one of a long list of British actors to receive a gong at the 78th Golden Globe Awards this week. Perhaps less well known is that Kaluuya cut his teeth in a Radio 4 sitcom from 2009 about a group of hapless surveillance operatives. Dolly Parton has also been in the news after singing an impromptu song about vaccination. There’s plenty of Dolly Parton riches in the archives, including interviews with Terry Wogan and the unforgettable moment when Parton presented the National Lottery in 1998.

Elsewhere, a request leads Greg to a song contest where listeners were invited to vote for the likeliest hit. Songs You Might Never Have Heard was a long-running series from the 1930s in which a committee of listeners including a shop girl, a hospital nurse, a postman and his wife gave their verdict on ditties by new songwriters. Remarkably, some of the songs from the series survive on vinyl, which gives Greg the perfect opportunity to judge one of them for himself.

Producer: Dan Hardoon Show less