Kirsty Wark

The Documentary, home of the best documentaries from the BBC World Service.

For this edition of The Documentary from the BBC World Service, Kirsty Wark reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history.

In this episode, marking twenty-five years since 9/11, they reflect on the attacks of the eleventh of September 2001 and the events that changed the world.

I'm at the National September the eleventh Memorial in Lower Manhattan.

Sometimes the shorter ones are also where someone's literally been.

Like Kirsty Wark had a reformer Pilates class to get to.

So she started and said, I've got a hard finish.

I've got to leave at 12.15.

And also you can, you can talk a lot about a topic and miss the heart of the matter.

I mean, I think I had Kirsty Wark on my podcast, and I'd forgotten that she did the very original menopause documentary.

I mean, I don't, I'm sure there had been other things done about it-

Yeah

And the austere anti-hero is played by David Westhead.

He and Stockard Channing spoke to the BBC's Kirsty Wark about why they wanted to do this unusual project together.

Well, we were having dinner, which we often do, and he said to me, David said to me that he wanted to get back on stage again.

He'd been doing a lot of bits and pieces and movies and this, that, and the other.

You're listening to The Front Row podcast with me, Kirsty Wark.

Tonight, the mezzo soprano star Joyce DiDonato on the explosive potential of her voice and channeling Emily Dickinson.

I'm joined by head of YouTube, who's just told the audience at the TV Festival in Edinburgh that we are in the next golden age of television, but what does that look like? The joy of laughing out loud, we'll be talking about the acts which have just made it to the Edinburgh Festival Comedy Award shortlist.

From transexual Transylvania [laughs]

Thanks for listening to Front Row.

I'm Kirsty Wark, and the producer was Caitlin Sneddon.

There are plenty more episodes on BBC Sounds, including the late, great Dolly Parton speaking to Samira back in 2023.

Catch it if you can.

So he was basically organizing what, and then there was footage of that, was a really threatening, again, masked, uh, kind of nasty d-demonstration that was trying to kind of shut down people standing up for migrants and asylum seekers.

So, you know, I did wonder in this piece whe-whether there was a point where anyone on this production wondered if they were being played, for one thing, because it struck me, it actually reminded me a lot of Kirsty Wark's thing about Alex Salmond, where they had sunk so much time into fo- into following that trial, convinced that he would be found guilty, that when he wasn't, um, you know, which it's almost audible shock, the, the, the correct decision, which was just to say this stuff is all now trash, you know, because we've basically skewed it so completely, wasn't taken, and they just tried to kind of get some mileage out of what they'd spent hours, weeks, months probably on already.

And it was just wrong.

And with this one, they start off with Darren, and so by the end of it, you go, "Hmm, Darren, bit of a boy, eh? This is the sort of stuff he gets up to." But you're standing your whole documentary up and going almost through him.

You're listening to the Front Row podcast with me, Kirsty Wark.

Welcome to the dazzling mirrored Spiegeltent at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, part of the world's biggest celebration of the arts.

We have a stellar cast of guests in front of a jam-packed audience who are in fine voice.

[laughs] Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to Front Row.

I'm Kirsty Wark, and there are loads more episodes on BBC Sounds, including Joe Lycett talking about his new art exhibition in Birmingham.

Do catch him speaking to Samira.

The figure to beat there, of course, is 75 points.

A record currently jointly held by, yes, fellow novelist Irvin Welch and BBC journalistic icon Kirsty Wark.

If the greatest non-sports person title is beyond him, could

he at least take his national title home? Chris O'Dowd's latest challenger is one of Scotland's finest writers.

Um, now, Henry, just to catch you up on some of the behind-the-scenes goings on from the last few days.

Yesterday, Kirsty Wark was a bit of a- an eclipse skeptic.

As in she didn't believe it was happening?

No, no [laughs] not like a de-