Private Passions

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Private Passions Podcast

Discussion & Talk

Music: Classical

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates, and talk about the influence music has had on their lives

Private Passions: Kate Bingham

Kate Bingham

BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, Kate Bingham

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the former head of the vaccine taskforce, Dame Kate Bingham.

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the former head of the vaccine taskforce, Dame Kate Bingham. With Holst, Puccini, Marcello and Schumann.

On 8 December 2020, a 90-year-old grandmother became the first person in the world to be given the Covid jab as part of a mass vaccination programme. Within six months more than 30 million people in the UK had received at least one dose. Many people say that extraordinary achievement would not have been possible without Dame Kate Bingham. A venture capitalist with a first-class degree in biochemistry, in May 2020 she was asked by the Prime Minister to head a new Vaccine Taskforce, leading British efforts to find and manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine for the UK and abroad. Her appointment was not without controversy. But, in the words of Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, who invented the AstraZeneca vaccine, “her calm decisions in the uncertain early days of the pandemic saved countless lives”. Kate Bingham was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours List. 

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Kate Bingham reveals what it was like to create the Taskforce, working remotely from home in Wales. It was her first encounter with the inner workings of government, a culture she describes as paralysed by “groupthink”, and “a massive aversion to risk”. She reveals the music that sustained her, and which she listened to at night when she ran. Kate is an oboist, and she begins her music selection with Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto; other choices include Gustav Holst, Robert Schumann, Arturo Marquez, Guys and Dolls, and a song with lyrics by her son Sam. 

Produced by Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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