Stereo

with Sue MacGregor and John Humphrys

Presenter Chris Dunkley Producer JOHN WATKINS

Producer HOWARD ROGERS

On Fire for Guy by MICHAEL CARSON. .. Read by Hugh Dickson Benson, fat and 14, has a rather different interpretation of Guy Fawkes' Day.
Producer TRACEY NEALE

Awake, my soul, and with the sun (Morning Hymn) (BBC HB 403); James 1, w 19-27; Create in us clean hearts (A. Snedden); Forth in thy name, 0 Lord, I go (Song 34) (BBC HB 406) Director of Music
LESLIE OLIVE. Stereo

Michael Rosen talks to the writer Nina Bawden. Producer JILL BURRIDGE

Presenter John Waite

with Derek Cooper
Producer SHEILA DILLON

Presenter Nick Clarke

The Witch's Shopping Spree by CAROLYN DINAN. Stereo

from Manchester.
Sensible, reliable, down-to-earth and rosy-cheeked ... Is the northern lass a stereotype, or can you really meet her in the cobbled streets of Lancashire?
Helen Boaden asks Lynda Lee-Potter and actress Lynda Baron.
Serial: How Like an Angel Last episode. Serial producer PAT MCLOUGHLIN

See panel page 82

The first Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Adapted in two episodes by Bert Coules
with Clive Merrison as Sherlock Holmes and Michael Williams as Dr John Watson

London, 1881: a penniless doctor meets a curious young man with some extremely strange habits....
(Stereo)
(Repeated next Sunday, 2.30pm)
See panel, right

The game's afoot! But tell me, Holmes, why should Clive Merrison feel such an affinity with yourself? Radio sleuth David Gillard has been following the clues...

Clive Merrison has always had a sneaking desire to play Sherlock Holmes, partly because so many friends and fans have told him that he should. 'There's a famous etching of Holmes - either from the Strand magazine or one of the early books - which is the absolute spit of me,' he explains. 'For years now people have been sending it to me and saying "It's you!" so I have rather hankered after the part.'
It is certainly ironic that when Clive finally makes his bow as Conan Doyle's Baker Street immortal on Friday, the fact that he bears a striking resemblance to the detective matters not at all. This is radio, and the start of a new Classic Serial which chronicles the meeting of Holmes and Watson and their first case together, A Study in Scarlet.
Clive, however, is simply delighted to be following in the radio pipe-smoke of Carleton Hobbs (and, more recently, Roger Rees), not to mention the footprints of Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Michael Caine and Jeremy Brett...
He's also looking forward to working again with Michael Williams, the faithful Dr Watson of this adaptation. 'We had a very happy time together in the TV comedy series Double First,' he recalls.
In A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle depicted his creation as a man with 'sharp and piercing eyes', a 'thin, hawk-like nose' and a chin which had 'the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination'. Clive, however, describes his own looks as 'a cross between Norman Tebbit and Jeremy Thorpe'. So how does he see Holmes? 'A mysterious, asexual genius.'
Holmes may be a first for Merrison but radio is where he started, having won the Radio Prize - six months with the radio rep - at Drama School. 'My first line was with Jessie Matthews in Mrs Dale's Diary and within a short while I was playing a leading role opposite Irene Worth.'
Though TV and the theatre now take up most of his time - he was Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing for the RSC last year and is currently making a second series of The Labours of Erica for Thames - radio remains his first love.
Clive was voted Sony Radio Actor of the Year in 1984 for his performance as John Osborne's Luther and he admits: 'That gave me more pleasure than if I'd won an Oscar.'
Classic Serial: A Study in Scarlet, Friday 3.00pm

The first in a series of five Mysterious Tales by WILKIE COLLINS abridged by MICHAEL BAKEWELL.
Read by David Suchet. 'Speechless, with no expression on her face, she came closer and closer - stopped - and slowly raised the knife.'
Producer ROSEMARY HART

Stereo (Details Thurs 9.15pm)

Presented by Robert Williams and Frances Coverdale

and Financial Report

Clive Jacobs discovers what's new and what's happening in the world of transport on land, sea and in the air.
Producer JILL THOMAS

with Margaret Howard Producer NIGEL ACHESON
Stereo

This week:
Beatrix Campbell , journalist
Dr John Rae , Director of Portman Group
Tom Sawyer , Deputy
General Secretary, NUPE and David Willetts ,
Director of Studies, Centre for Policy Studies tackle the issues raised in Skegness, Lincolnshire. Chair
Jonathan Dimbleby.
Producer ANNA CARRAGHER BBC Bristol

Presented by Marcel Berlins
Producer GARETH BUTLER

Television coverage of the 1989 Californian earthquake, the birth of the docudrama, and the bill allowing homosexuals to register as married couples in San Francisco.

Farewell to Wigan Pier The working-class novel wins no prizes these days. Stan Barstow's A Kind of Loving and Barry Hines 's Kes both made a great impact 20 years ago, but has the class issue now moved from books to television?
Paul Allen talks to
Stan Barstow,
Barry Hines , Pat Barker and Dennis Gunning.
Producer DAVE SHEASBY BBC North East. Stereo

by Alistair Cooke

with Richard Kershaw Stereo

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (10). Stereo

with Bill Wallis , David Tate and Sally Grace Written by BARRY ATKINS. PETER BAYNHAM ,
MARK BRISENDEN. SIMON BULUVANT. MIKE COLEMAN , MICHAEL DINES, MAX HANDLEY.
ROBERT LINFORD , BILL MATTHEWS , GED PARSONS. OLEH STEPANIUK. PETER HICKEY and others. Producer BILL DARE. Stereo

with Vincent Duggleby

See panel page 82