Â鶹Éç

Tom RobinsonÌýis a broadcaster & songwriter. As a recording artist he has released 14 albums since 1978. As a broadcaster he began hosting his own radio show on the Â鶹Éç World Service in 1985. HeÌýnow hosts a show onÌýÂ鶹Éç Radio 6 Music with a particular emphasis on new and emerging artists.

Ìý

Multi-instrumentalist and band leader Django Bates inherits Charlie Parker’s 'My Little Suede Shoes' and passes on Django Bates’ 'Interval Song'.

Ìý

JP Devlin chats to the people on Morecambe promenade.

Ìý

With beer festival season in full swing, we talk to beer sommelier Jane Peyton about why we’re seeing a golden age of British beer.Ìý

Ìý

Ìý

Two intrepid cyclists tell of their forays into the heart of England. Nina Wilson has ridden to every village and town in Norfolk and Suffolk and Simon Hood explains in his book 'Bicycle Kicks'Ìýhow he pedalled his way to every York City match, home and away, for a season.

Ìý

Ìý

Ìý

George 'Johnny' Johnson is the last surviving British member of the Dambuster raid - an attack on Germany’s Ruhr Valley dams in 1943, which went on to become the stuff of Second World War folklore. Now aged 91, Johnny reflects on his role as flight sergeant during the dangerous RAF mission.

Ìý

Photo courtesy of the Bradford Exchange, who awarded Johnny a replica Lancaster bomber to mark the 70th anniversary of the raid.

I am in Edinburgh for the festival, not the fringe, which seems to belong to my past, but for the main festival which may tell you something about the processes of age, complacency and embourgoisement in a stoutish middle aged parson. In truth, the main festival is far more radical and exciting than nearly anything on the fringe, all those comics on the make signed up to the ha-ha versions of Simon Cowell, all those black footless tights, all those flyers. I’m here to interview some people at platform events, a psychiatrist who is interested in the interface between technology and spirituality and to talk to Philip Glass and Patti Smith who are here performing their tribute to Allen Ginsberg. What’s not to like?ÌýÌý

Ìý

But even without these enticements, I love Edinburgh. One of my oldest friends lives here and I always lodge with him when I visit, so I don’t have to stay in a hotel with forty people I know from London, or, worst of all, in one of the flats the Â鶹Éç rents for the duration from the many here who choose to go on holiday for a fortnight and hand their city over to the mimes. I once stayed in one with a loo so narrow you could not close the door properly if you were sitting on it. Staying with a friend not only means my daily needs are amply provided for, but I also get to hang out with his friends, and in the twenty five years I’ve been coming we’ve all got to know each other very well. I’ve been to their marriages, the baptisms of their children, been on group holidays, and buried one. It is really like a home from home, and every time the train heads north out of Berwick on Tweed for some reason I think of Van Morrison and the Chieftains’ version of ‘Shenandoah’. I would so love to spend more time in Scotland, in Edinburgh and in Glasgow which I love too and in Kintyre, where we go ever year, and to get to know the Hebrides better. There’s something about this country and its people that resonates very deeply with me, I hope not too sentimentally – I toured the world with a tough Glaswegian and have learned something of Scotland’s harder side. But that ultimately gives grain and depth to a place I have grown to love. I wonder if it will choose to go its own way in 2014? I suppose something will happen some time, but will it be that, then? I don’t know, and what does it matter what I think about something that’s for Scotland to decide? If it does become independent of the UK then I might one day become an emigrant, or an immigrant, depending on your perspective, and meet one night a year in a pub in Inverary to recite the poetry of Philip Larkin, bring in ceremoniously a chicken tikka masala, and put on Radio Four.

Ìý

Should you put on Radio Four this Saturday at nine in the morning you will hear me and Suzy Klein in conversation with Tom Robinson, the last surviving British Dambuster Johnny Johnson, beer sommelier Jane Peyton and the inheritance tracks of Django Bates.

Ìý

Ìý