Loose Ends

Stuart Maconie is in Glasgow for the city's annual folk, roots and world music festival - Celtic Connections.
He's joined by comedian Marcus Brigstocke, whose tour Vitruvian Mango sees him trying to figure out what it is to be a man, and why he feels like more of one when his wife asks him to reach something from a high shelf.
Ashley Storrie will be chatting all about the new series of her award-winning BBC show Dinosaur. Autistic palaeontologist Nina is knee-deep in mud on an Isle of Wight dig site, living the dream. Well, either that or she's desperately missing reality tv marathons on her own sofa with some sausage rolls.
In writer Louise Welsh's latest novel The Cut Up, Glasgow auctioneer Rilke is once again drawn in to drama, murder and detective work, as he curses his very loyal but very troublesome friends.
With performances from Newfoundland folk band Rum Ragged who are keeping the music of their Canadian island home alive. Plus Glasgow-based female and non-binary music collective Hen Hoose share a track from new album The Twelve.
Producer: Caitlin Sneddon
Production Coordinator: Lauren Stewart
Engineers: Andrew Hay, Fiona Johnstone, Sean Mullervy

Joining Stuart for this week's Loose Ends are actor Nigel Havers, who tells us about his remarkable shepherd's pies and the sex appeal of Mrs Thatcher.
Comedy writer and performer Rosalie Minnitt on how dreaming of cows and seeing moonlit owls doesn't bode terribly well.
Comedian Mike Wozniak on how a luxuriant moustache can help balance out an underdeveloped lower face.
And there's music from Dan Gillespie Sells, performing a song by his band The Feeling, and Liverpool's electro-pop trio Stealing Sheep, with their track GLO.
Presenter: Stuart Maconie
Producer: Elizabeth Foster

Stuart Maconie's tiptoeing the line between dark and light in this week's Loose Ends.
When she won Strictly Jill Halfpenny got the highest ever score for her sequin studded jive, but there's not a glitterball to be seen in her latest role as the traumatised mum Eve in the dark psychological thriller Girl Taken, which also stars Alfie Allen as the creepiest teacher you'd never hope to meet.
Ian Smith is a comedian who mines his own anxieties for his art - be that his Radio 4 series called "Ian Smith is Stressed", the unintentionally hilarious news from his hometown in the Northern News Podcast or his new tour, "Footspa Half Empty".
The comic, actor and Dead Ringers impressionist Jess Robinson's very funny and also very sad new memoir contrasts her own twentysomething exploits as a stage ingenue with her Jewish Grandmother's diaries at the same age - Life Is Rosi: Grandma, Me and Our Diaries at 23. Grandma Rosi loved music, boyfriends and having a laugh too but was enduring Germany during the rise of Hitler at the same time.
And as they head out on tour, we have performance from The Charlatan's new album We Are Love.
Producer: Olive Clancy
Assistant Producer: Samuel Nixon
Technical Producers: John Cole and Mark Ward
Production Coordintor: Pete Liggins

Joining Stuart Maconie for this week's Loose Ends are Professor Alice Roberts with her book Domination, which takes a deep dig into the heart of the Roman Empire.
Comedian and poet Rob Auton is about to tour with his show CAN: The Story of a Man Called Can...he's here to tell us all he can about that.
Actor Amir El-Masry is starring in the new film Giant as the boxer Prince Naseem Hamed, and he joins Loose Ends to talk technique, training and working with Pierce Brosnan and Sylvester Stallone.
The comedian Esther Manito drops into the studio mid-tour to bring her humorous take on what she calls a "very undignified period of life".
And there's music from Cast who are about to release their new album Yeah Yeah Yeah at the end of January.
Presenter: Stuart Maconie
Producer: Elizabeth Foster

Clive Anderson is joined in Glasgow by broadcaster and author Sally Magnusson, whose latest novel breathes new life into stories told to her as a child by her Icelandic father. She brings together modern day Orkney and the Norse myth of Hel in The Shapeshifter's Daughter.
In 2017 Ray Bradshaw became the first comedian to perform simultaneously in English and in sign language. In his upcoming tour CODA, he returns to tales of his parents and the experience of growing up as A Child of Deaf Adults.
Grado has many a feather in his cap - wrestler, Two Doors Down star, presenter - and he is currently brightening up panto season in Jock and the Beanstalk (oh no he isn't!).
Plus music from Nathan Evans x SAINT PHNX, and Mairi Campbell.
Presenter: Clive Anderson
Producer: Caitlin Sneddon