Girl Stuck in Basketball Hoop

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BBC Radio 4 - Girl Stuck in Basketball Hoop

Stand-up comedian Ian Smith investigates a strange occurrence in his home town of Goole.

During a three month period in 2019, three girls got stuck in basketball hoops in the Yorkshire town of Goole.  Ian Smith wants to know what happened.

When stand-up comedian Ian Smith read the headline "GIRL RESCUED" in his local paper, The Goole Times, he wasn’t expecting to read about a young girl trapped in a basketball hoop. The article went on to say that this was the third time in as many months that a girl had to be prized from the rim of a basketball hoop in his home town. Maybe this wasn’t your regular teenage horseplay in the local basketball courts - Ian wondered if something more sinister was going on.

This is the story of his investigation into what happened, and more importantly, why it happened.  It's not just a quest for the truth behind these "self-dunking" incidents but also a soul-searching examination of the lives of the teenagers of Goole and a probe into the psyche of people across the world who choose to squeeze themselves through small spaces.

Ian leaves no stone unturned as he asks the tough (and not so tough) questions to guests including his local MP, the education specialist Adele Bates author of "Miss I Don't Give a Sh*t", comedian Jessica Fostekew and the world famous contortionist, Captain Frodo.

Thanks to Angela Huzulak and Patrick Goldsborough at The Goole Times, Dan Sproats, Tilly Sproats, Terence Smith, Joe Zalias, Caroline Nicholls, The Delightful Sausage, Phil Ellis, Jack Gleadow, Nicky Wilkinson, Sebastian Søgaard Hansen and Bukky Fadipe.

Written and presented by Ian Smith with additional material by Alex Kealy
Production co-ordinator:  Sarah Sharpe
Sound design:  Chris Maclean
Producer:  Richard Morris

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