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: Darts with Muhammad Ali

Darts with Muhammad Ali

BBC Radio 4 - Rewinder, Darts with Muhammad Ali

Greg James heads deep into the BBC archives to deliver a selection of extraordinary audio.

Greg James heads deep into the BBC archives to deliver a selection of prime and often forgotten audio, using stories of the week as his launch-pad.

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, the start of summer prompts Greg to take a trip to the village fete. Amid the welly wanging and jam judging he eavesdrops on a planning meeting in 1980 where tensions over tent hire begin to run high. He also finds out about a particularly fateful fete in Liverpool in 1957, which proved to be a turning point for a teenage Paul McCartney.

Listener requests lead Greg into the unlikely world of radio ventriloquism as he looks back at one of the most popular radio shows of all time, Educating Archie - featuring the already stunning voice of a 14-year-old Julie Andrews - as well as a chance to revisit the best jokes from the woman once voted Wittiest Living Person, the late Linda Smith.

And to mark the fiftieth anniversary of The Fight of the Century, in which Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier famously squared up, Greg investigates some of Ali's other talents, from teaching children about tooth decay to playing darts in a Radio 1 studio. 

Producer: Tim Bano

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