Midweek: Diverse Conversation

This week Libby Purves is joined by financial expert Alvin Hall; singer and songwriter Alkinoos Ioannidis; foreign correspondent Alex Crawford; and owner of Dartmoor Zoological Park, Benjamin Mee.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Shane and Timothy Spall, who sailed their barge Matilda around Britain; Barrie Rutter, founder and Artistic Director of Northern Broadsides theatre company; biologist Juliane Koepcke who was the only survivor of a plane crash in Peru in 1971; and musician and producer Grant Gordon who tells of how he and his father's relationship was cemented by their shared love of golf.

This week Libby Purves is joined by singer/songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan; former boxer Sugar Ray Leonard; dancer and actor Adam Cooper; and scenographer Pamela Howard OBE.

This week Libby Purves is joined by singer David Essex; fashion designer Ozwald Boateng; conservationist Dame Daphne Sheldrick and actor and wildlife artist James Burke-Dunsmore.

This week Libby Purves is joined by comedian Shelley Bridgman, winner of the Silver Stand Up award for the over 55's; actor Pauline Quirke on her book 'Where Have I Gone?'; Palestinian director Amir Nizar Zuabi who is directing 'A Comedy of Errors' as part of the World Shakespeare Festival; and photographer Dennis Morris on his book 'Growing Up Black' in which he charts the history of the black British experience during the 60s and 70s.

Libby Purves is joined by illusionist Hans Klok, reputedly 'the fastest magician in the world'; Adrian Jackson who is a writer and director.His latest play ‘A Few Man Fridays’ tells the story of how the British government evicted 2000 islanders from the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean during the cold war to make way for a US military base. Sabrina Jean's family were part of that community & she joins in with her story. Scholar Mary M Talbot's latest book 'Dotter of her Father's Eyes' is part biography and part personal history; Dave Kelly lost his sight fifteen years ago and after two years of struggling to adjust to his condition, he was inspired to set up his own charity, Daisy UK. The charity runs sports sessions for the disabled, including blind football and wheelchair basketball.

Libby Purves is joined by Professor Sean Street who is an historian, writer, presenter and poet and his new book is 'The Poetry of Radio - The Colour of Sound';Jazz saxophonist and composer Barbara Thompson and her husband, the drummer Jon Hiseman who feature in a BBC Four documentary 'Playing Against Time'which shows how she copes with Parkinson's disease; Sir Anthony Sher who is starring in Nicholas Wright's new play 'Travelling Light' at the National Theatre and biographer Jonathan Croall who had been investigating his father's life as actor in the 'silent' films and beyond.

This week Libby Purves is joined by actor Katherine Kelly; Dr Steve Peters, psychiatrist with the British Cycling Team; former US army chief Rhonda Cornum; and BBC presenter Clare Balding.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Lord Baker who is a cartoon enthusiast and is also Vice-Chairman of the Cartoon Museum. A new exhibition HER MAJ: 60 Years of Unofficial Portraits of the Queen is at the Cartoon Museum; Rudi Richardson is the founder of Streetlytes a charity for the homeless, which he set up after 33 years drifting in and out of addiction, prison and life on the streets; Ishy Din,a taxi-driver from Middlesborough who now writes plays. His new one is entitled Snookered, about young Asian men struggling to find their identity in modern Britain and Michele Hanson who is a columnist and writer. She writes a weekly column in the Guardian’s Women section called A Certain Age. Her memoir What The Grown Ups Were Doing is published by Simon and Schuster.

This week Libby Purves is joined by micro-graver Graham Short whose latest work was to engrave The Word of God, the first chapter of the Qur'an, onto the head of a pin; Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell on his 45 years of campaigning; former banker Gary Mulgrew, one of the 'NatWest Three' who spent time in prison in the US for fraud; and Vincent Simone and Flavia Cacace, stars of BBC's Strictly Come Dancing, who bring their creation, Midnight Tango to London's Aldwych Theatre.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Antony Woodward, author and microlight pilot who features in BBC Two's Wonderland: The Real Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines; journalist, broadcaster and former ITN news presenter Sandy Gall on his book 'War Against The Taliban - Why It All Went Wrong In Afghanistan'; Nick Coleman, a music journalist who has to relearn how to listen to music after suffering from Sudden Neurosensory Hearing Loss; and musician turned comedian Rosie Wilby on her show 'How (not) to make it in Britpop'.

This week Libby Purves is joined by violinist Tasmin Little talking about a new BBC Four documentary about Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending; filmmaker John Akomfrah on his new film 'The Nine Muses' which looks at the history of mass migration to post-war Britain using Homer's poem The Odyssey as a starting point; retired vet Dr Andrew Higgins who was posted to Oman in 1974 during the Dhofar War as one of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps to help win the hearts and minds of the local population; and Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen on the 60th Anniversary of the play, The Mousetrap.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Frank and Winnie Tovey who spent sixteen years in India where Frank was a medical missionary; actor Simon Russell-Beale is currently playing Stalin in the National Theatre production of 'Collaborators' by John Hodge; Noo Saro-Wiwa, daughter of the political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was murdered in Nigeria in 1995, writes about her own journey back there; and Anne Wallace, has branched out from fish and chips to a coffee shop offering IT courses to the elderly.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Alistair Sutcliffe, a GP who became the first man to summit the highest mountain on each of the seven continents at the first attempt, but subsequently suffered a near fatal brain haemorrhage; filmmaker Martha Fiennes who has created her first digital installation, Nativity, based on the Christmas Nativity scene, on display in a specially constructed chalet in Covent Garden piazza; Celia Imrie who is currently in Michael Frayn's 'Noises Off' at the Old Vic; and Prof Amanda Vickery who presents a BBC Two documentary 'The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen' which explores her enduring popularity through her plots and characters.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Susie McKenna, Creative Director of the Hackney Empire; Peter Bougourd was second Coxn of the St Peter Port lifeboat; Professor John Wallwork performed the world's first triple transplant and features in a BBC Inside Out documentary 'The Heartman'; and musician and composer Matthew Herbert whose latest work is an album called ONE PIG, which records the 24 week lifecycle of a pig from birth to table and beyond.