Womans hour

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Woman’s Hour Daily Podcast

Woman's Hour brings you the big celebrity names and leading women in the news, with subjects ranging widely from politics to health, law, education, arts, parenting, relationships, work, fiction, food and fashion. Presented by Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey. Find out more at www. bbc. co. uk/radio4/womanshour

WH Collection: Xinran

Weekend WH: Sophia Loren & the digestive tract

Cara Dillon; Early Policewomen; Indian Sterilisations

Keir Starmer; Joan of Arc, Heroism; Pick up artists

Media Coverage of Murdered Women

Debbie Harry and Chris Stein; Gender Pay Gap; Criminalising Paying for Sex; How to Talk About Poor Performance

Mary Roach; Queen Caroline; girls in China

Weekend WH: Blondie & Marian Keyes

Available:

22 days remaining

Chris Stein and Debbie Harry from Blondie talk about music, their relationship and their new book celebrating the New York punk scene. We hear from a woman suffering from the debilitating effects of osteoporosis. It’s estimated that half of all women and 1 in 5 men over 50 will break a bone due to poor bone health. The UK is home to up to 90 thousand au pairs at any one time. But they currently have no protection in terms of working hours, pay and living conditions. We hear from a young woman who experienced first hand life as an au pair. A survivor of Jimmy Savile’s abuse tells us her story and the author of a book which investigates Savile’s crimes explains why he thinks he got away with his depraved abuse for so many years. The Queen of Page Turners, Marian Keyes, talks all things sparkly, strictly and her new book about losing your old life and finding a new one. And at 82 years old the author Shirley Conran discusses sexual pleasure for older women.

Contents

History [ edit ]

On 1 January 2005, the show became Man's Hour for one day only, on which it was presented by Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow. On 18 July 2010, after 64 years of Woman's Hour . the BBC began broadcasting a full series called Men's Hour on BBC Radio 5 presented by Tim Samuels .

As of 2013, the programme had 3.9 million listeners, 44% of whom were men. [ 1 ] In 2006 it had 2.7 million listeners, 40% of whom were men. [ 2 ]

Format [ edit ]

In its current format, the first 45 minutes of the programme consist of reports, interviews and debates on health, education, cultural and political topics aimed at women and mothers. The last 15 minutes are taken up with short-run drama serials ( Woman's Hour Drama ), which periodically change. One of the most popular of these are the recurring Ladies of Letters serials starring Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge. (This section is also broadcast at 7.45pm.) Before 1998 the last quarter of an hour was dedicated to readings.

Schedule [ edit ]

Woman's Hour has been broadcast at 10am since James Boyle 's revision of the Radio 4 schedules in April 1998. Between September 1991 and April 1998 it was broadcast at 10.30am, having previously gone out for many years in an early afternoon slot. The programme's move to a morning slot was unpopular among some listeners who, for family or other reasons, work only in the morning. Michael Green. the then controller of Radio 4, made his decision the previous year and considered the elimination of the programme title. [ 4 ] Weekend Woman's Hour is broadcast on Saturday afternoons at 4 pm, which features highlights of the previous week.

Music [ edit ]

In its earlier years, it used a variety of popular light classics as signature tunes, including such pieces as Anthony Collins ' Vanity Fair and the lively Overture from Gabriel Faure 's Masques et Bergamasques . From the early 1970s, specially composed pieces were used, several of which were provided by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop .

Feminism [ edit ]

In April 2014, Radio 4's Roger Bolton stated on the BBC's Feedback Blog: "As you well know BBC programmes are supposed to be impartial but I’m not sure if that can be said of Woman’s Hour, at least when it comes to feminism. Woman’s Hour is in fact a powerful advocate for women’s empowerment. " [ 5 ] The programme maintains links with Women's Aid [ 6 ] and the Fawcett Society, [ 7 ] a campaign group which promotes using the media to secure political change on women's behalf. [ 8 ]

WOMAN'S HOUR

Woman's Hour are not your average band. The first clue comes in the name of the London-based swoon-pop four-piece, taken from a beloved female-focussed news and culture show on BBC Radio 4. The second is in their graphic, striking monochrome visuals, meticulously curated in collaboration with TATE and MOMA certified fine artists Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg. These play with shape and texture, much like their powerful, iridescent music. On their excellent debut album 'Conversations', this has the intricate construction and intimacy of The xx and the iridescent shimmer of summer-defining indie pop. Pay attention now, or regret it later.

"In a sense, we feel like the odd ones out", explains frontwoman Fiona Burgess of their nose-to-tail approach to their visuals, performance and songcraft. "It's quite empowering that we're doing it as four people but we're not part of a bigger collective." Indeed, their 360º approach is closer to the art/music crossover of acts such as Throbbing Gristle, Yoko Ono or Factory Floor than most of this year's indie hopes. Their music — as poignantly personal as pop gets — has a rare singularity and purpose.

Take single "Her Ghost", which layers a breezy guitar hook with Fiona's beautiful, sighing lyric of inner turmoil. "I'm interested in the idea of memory and how powerful memories can be, and how powerful some things can be to let go of," she says. "A lot of my writing is me trying to understand an emotion or situation." The track's melody and a message lingers in the recesses of the mind like a box of treasured letters.

Woman's Hour started to come together one summer, when Fiona started collaborating with her brother, guitarist William Burgess. "I had been to a couple of rehearsals with other bands and it wasn't very much fun," says William. "I mentioned to Fiona that I'd like her to sing and we decided to have a go. I went round to her place one day and it turned our that she had a pretty nice voice!" The two recruited bassist Nicolas Graves, who was William's friend from back home (the pair had played in a couple of "local guitar bands" back in Kendal) and the three began creating their music. Nicolas explains: "We just messed around in each other's houses for a bit and tried to get a few songs together."

"We played our first gig in 2011," Nicolas continues. "It was at Fiona's house in Camden. It was a hat-themed party. I remember wearing a beret. Fiona was wearing a trilby, and Will had a sombrero on." It was incredibly nerve-racking for the trio despite the jolly occasion ("I almost froze with fear at one point" laughs Nicolas), but the gig was a runaway success, and it was there that they all met keyboardist Josh Hunnisett, who was already a friend of Fiona's and happened to be doing the sound at the event. Even in the shambolic situation, the band were meticulous perfectionists.

The quartet had their first rehearsal in an old vicarage in Dalston. "It just felt really honest," says Josh. "There was no 'you can't do this, you can't do that, don't try that — the style of music felt pure and everyone was expressing themselves in the way they wanted. We've tried to think about this as a collaboration between four different creative people." Each band member brings a wholly distinct set of influences to the band — from German cold wave to pop rarities and uncompromising singer/songwriters. Their website even has a section dedicated to recommended reading.

But it was their favourite radio show that was to be have most prominent effect on the band. "When we were first doing demos we named them all after BBC Radio 4 programmes," explains Nick. "The World at One, Afternoon Play, that kind of thing. I think Woman's Hour might have been one of them, and when it came to play our first gig (at The Queen's Head in London) one of our friends suggested using it and it stuck." Indeed, their jangle-pop first single Jenni, which is quite different to their current material, was named after Radio 4 stalwart Jenni Murray. The band's first 7", "Jenni/ Human", was released through London label Dirty Bingo after the label head tracked them down on online and interviewed them for beloved London zine Loud And Quiet.

Although the single made a splash, things were moving too fast for the band. "Suddenly we thought, 'should we have had something to back this up?", says William. "'We didn't have any more songs, so we took a year and a half off to write and develop the sound. That's also when we met Tom Morris, our producer." The band hibernated, starting from the bottom up. "Let's get everything fucking slick, how we want it, let's do everything exactly how we want it ourselves - don't compromise."

It was worth the wait. When the band put their gorgeously lilting comeback single "Our Love Has No Rhythm" online in 2013, the blogs exploded, in part due to the glossy monochrome video depicting Fiona's face in close-up, and also the stunning single artwork — an uneasy found image of a suited gentleman falling over. "We've been using images that are taken from manuals," explains Fiona. "Lots of different 'How To' manuals from How to Train a Chihuahua to How to Fall Over Without Hurting Yourself. We like the idea of how to look after yourself physically paired with the music, which is a lot less direct."

Perhaps Woman's Hour's music does not hammer its message home, but there's a nuance and craft that's scarcely found in today's industry. They followed "Our Love Has No Rhythm", with the cooing, Beach House-esque "Darkest Place" in which Fiona implores "I don't understand why you're not around" over swooning keyboards, with a cooing ooooh-ooooh hook. For the track's striking video, she'd is depicted in close crop with her eyes closed as an unknown figure attempts to prise them open. "I was finishing a degree in performance studies at the time, and I came across this particular piece by Vito Acconci", she says of the inspiration for the video. "The original piece is about 20 minutes long, and it's absolutely gruelling, there's no soundtrack to it and it's a piece where you can hear the sound in the room of two people in a physical struggle. You can hear the heavy breathing, the feet, the occasional sounds of resistance." She endured a restaging of the piece, which she found "very intense and intimate."

Woman's Hour have an uncompromising commitment to the unconventional. For them, music does not exist as merely a hummable soundtrack but as a wider and more artistic proposition. As Fiona continues: "A lot of music videos are not very challenging, and I like the idea of them being quite confronting. Our album artwork is inspired by a picture of a woman surrounded by pyramids that was part of a magazine article called The Start of an Era. It was a 1970s performance piece that was performed at the Whitney Museum in New York, and we've also designed nine of these pyramids with Oliver Chanarin that we'll incorporate into our live show when possible." The Start of an Era? We couldn't have said it better ourselves. [LESS]