Rewinder

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BBC Radio 4 LW

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Greg James digs into the BBC's archives, using current stories as a portal to the past.

BBC Radio 4 FM

Rewinder: Bald heads and new balls

Bald heads and new balls

BBC Radio 4 - Rewinder, Bald heads and new balls

Greg James, proud radio nerd, rummages through the BBC's vast archives.

Greg James, self-confessed 'proud radio nerd', returns to the BBC archives, using current stories and suggestions from listeners as a springboard into the BBC's unmatched vaults.

Greg James, host of the Radio 1 Breakfast show and self-confessed 'proud radio nerd', uses his access-all-areas pass to the BBC Archives to track down audio gems, using listener requests and current stories as a springboard into the vast vaults of past programmes. 

This week, a listener request starts a search for possible fakes in the archives: in the last series Greg played a scratchy recording, apparently from 1890, of the poet Tennyson reading his Charge of the Light Brigade - but was it the real thing or a cunningly constructed counterfeit, dating from the early 1960s? And who was the eccentric performance artist responsible for this trickery?

Summer is here, and with it comes the return of Wimbledon. Greg serves up some of tennis's pioneering women, from the French player who changed the game forever, to a more contemporary national treasure.

Greg also looks back at the disastrous opening night of BBC2, when a calamitous power cut stopped transmission of the launch and left a kangaroo stuck in a lift. 

And to mark the tenth anniversary of Amy Winehouse's death, Greg takes a look back at the life of a once in a generation talent. 

Producer Tim Bano

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