Alexei Sayle's Strangers on a Train

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Alexei Sayle with BBC Blocks Image

Alexei Sayle takes a train journey and reveals the stories of his fellow passengers.

Alexei Sayle breaks the golden rule of travelling by train in the UK - he actually talks to his fellow passengers to explore and reveal the lives of strangers on the train.

Alexei Sayle takes a train journey and breaks the golden rule of travelling by train in the UK - he actually talks to his fellow passengers to explore and reveal the lives of strangers on the train.

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Alexei Sayle's Strangers on a Train 

Alexei Sayle's Strangers on a Train (Series)

Alexei Sayle's Strangers on a Train: Series 1: Cardiff to Portsmouth

Cardiff to Portsmouth

Series 1

BBC Radio 4 - Alexei Sayle's Strangers on a Train, Series 1, Cardiff to Portsmouth

Alexei Sayle takes a rail journey from Cardiff to Portsmouth.

Alexei Sayle takes a train journey from Cardiff to Portsmouth and breaks the golden rule of travelling on a train by talking to his fellow passengers.

Author, actor and comedy icon, Alexei Sayle begins his travels across the country by rail in the first of a new six part series for Radio 4. 

Alexei’s mission is to break the golden rule of travelling by train and actually talk to his fellow passengers in a quest for conversations that reveal their lives, hopes, dreams and destinations. There’s humour, sadness and surprise as people talk about what is going on in their lives and, as Alexei passes through familiar towns and cities, he also tells stories and memories from his career and childhood.  

Alexei has a lifelong "ticket to ride" in his DNA. His father was a railway guard and the Sayle family benefitted from free travel in the UK and across Europe. As a boy, Alexei and his family roamed far and wide from the family home in Anfield, Liverpool. At a time when most people thought an exciting trip by train was to Brighton or Blackpool, Alexei travelled thousands of miles to mysterious towns with unpronounceable names in far flung corners of the continent.

In each programme in the series, Alexei embarks on a rail journey, taking a chance on who he might meet and inviting them to have a conversation with him.  In this first episode, he travels from Cardiff to Portsmouth. Among his many fellow travellers, he meets David who looks after tunnels for a living, Tess who speaks Russian and Ukrainian and has been trained to drive a tank, and technician Megan from the National Oceanography Centre who, while many of us might be daunted by trying to deal with a leaking washing machine, loves fixing things and takes on the maintenance of mass spectrometers as part of the centre’s work on climate change. 

Producers Peter Lowe and Nick Symons
A Ride production for Radio 4

Alexei Sayle's Strangers on a Train: Series 1

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Alexei Sayle's Strangers on a Train

Series 1

Cardiff to Portsmouth

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