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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

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Kirsty Lang

John Cleese

Jacqueline Springer

Hannah Kent

Kate Summerscale

Ruth Garde

John Gerrard

Angie Nehring

Front Row: John Cleese, A first for Jay Z, Electricity: The spark of life

John Cleese, A first for Jay Z, Electricity: The spark of life

23/02/2017

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, John Cleese, A first for Jay Z, Electricity: The spark of life

Monty Python's John Cleese on farce. Jay Z is inducted to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Monty Python's John Cleese on the attraction of farce, the significance of Jay Z's induction to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and artist John Gerrard on electricity as inspiration.

Monty Python legend John Cleese has adapted George Feydeau's 1892 French comedy BANG BANG for a brand-new staging at Colchester's Mercury Theatre. He talks about his enthusiasm for farce.

Jay Z is to become the first rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Jacqueline Springer discusses the significance and why it's taken four decades for rap to be recognised in this way.

Authors Hannah Kent and Kate Summerscale discuss the process of using real court cases as inspiration for their books. Hannah's novel, The Good People, is based on a mysterious case of a 'fairy doctress' in 1820s Ireland and Kate tells us about The Wicked Boy which she based on a grisly murder in Victorian England.

From Galvani and twitching frogs' legs to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; from Sci-fi to Bovril; electricity has inspired inventors, scientists and artists alike. As a new exhibition Electricity: The spark of life opens at the Wellcome Collection in London, curator Ruth Garde and Irish artist John Gerrard show us round.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang
Producer: Angie Nehring.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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