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Outlook: Outlook Mixtape: My Mama Cass, Little boy lost and found

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Cassette tape

07/06/2024 GMT

Outlook Mixtape: My Mama Cass, Little boy lost and found

BBC World Service - Outlook, Outlook Mixtape: My Mama Cass, Little boy lost and found

Mama Cass remembered, a boy’s 25-year search for home and Uncle Eric’s secret

Mama Cass remembered; a boy’s 25-year search for home, Uncle Eric’s secret talent and the dramatic escape from a sunken submarine.

Australian Sue Brierley adopted Saroo after he had been found wandering the streets of Kolkata aged five. He had got on a train that took him across India and away from his birth family, and couldn’t find his way back. Twenty-five years later Saroo used satellite maps online to retrace his steps to his first family’s home, and Sue finally met the birth mother she had thought about for so long.  

Joe Tucker has fond memories of his unconventional Uncle Eric. Eric lived most of his life with Joe's grandparents in a small terraced house in the north-west of England. Eric was a self-taught painter but it was only when he died at the age of 86 in July 2018, that his family found out his artwork had a story of its own. Joe has written a book about Eric Tucker called The Secret Painter.

Cass Elliot, known as 'Mama Cass', shot to fame in the 1960s with the US folk-rock group The Mamas & the Papas. She went solo and in 1974, while on tour, she died unexpectedly aged only 32. Cass left behind a seven-year-old daughter, Owen, who has spent the last 50 years speaking to those who knew Cass best and trying to discover who her mother really was.

In 1988, after colliding with a fishing trawler at the surface, the Peruvian submarine Pacocha began to sink. Some of the sailors abandoned ship and First Lieutenant Roger Cotrina Alvarado had to make a choice – jump overboard and live, or go back inside for the rest of the crew. The sinking submarine dragged him and 21 others down to the ocean floor. With oxygen running out, it would become Roger's job to find a way to escape. 

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar
Producer: Thomas Harding Assinder

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Photo: Cassette tape. Credit: Getty Images)

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