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The History Hour: Presidential diamonds and Tupperware parties

Discussion & Talk

12/08/2023 GMT

Presidential diamonds and Tupperware parties

BBC World Service - The History Hour, Presidential diamonds and Tupperware parties

A duck that toppled a president, a British train robbery and the Tupperware party boom.

How the satirical weekly journal, Le Canard enchaîné, toppled French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, and the army of American housewives enlisted to sell Tupperware.

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History stories from the BBC World Service.  
  
Journalist Claude Angeli discovered French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing received diamonds from a depraved African emperor, which contributed to him losing the presidential election in 1981.  
  
How Bosnia’s small Jewish community helped people from all sides of the conflict, during the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s.  
  
The story of the gang of thieves, who held up a British Royal Mail train on its journey from Glasgow to London in August 1963.   
  
Plus Jean-Michel Basquiat, a young black graffiti artist in the 1980s took the New York art world by storm. His paintings were selling for huge sums of money, but he died before the end of the decade.   
  
And the rise and fall of self-made businesswoman Brownie Wise, who inspired an army of US housewives to sell Tupperware at parties.  
  
  
Contributors:  
  
Journalist Claude Angeli  
Journalist Pauline Bock   
Former vice president of the Jewish community Jakob Finci  
Author Bob Kealing 
Journalist Reginald Abbiss   
Patti Astor, friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat

(Photo: French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Jean-Bédel Bokassa in Bangui, March 1975. Credit: Getty Images)

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