Private Passions

Michael Berkeley shares festive music choices from Private Passions over the years. We’ll hear how Handel can evoke memories of roast potatoes in the oven on Christmas day; we’ll spend time by the fire in a remote Irish castle, take a seasonal trip to the ballet, and share heart-warming singing from a variety of traditions. His guests include Chris Addison, Nina Stibbe, Brian Moore, David Mitchell, Shirley Collins and Sue Black.

The actor, comedian and writer Nick Mohammed hasn’t followed an obvious career path. His youthful obsessions included performing magic and playing the violin, followed by a first-class degree in geophysics. He even began a PhD in seismology – before his love of comedy took him in a very different direction. He’s ended up on the red carpet at the Emmys, thanks to his role as Nate the football coach in the much-acclaimed TV series Ted Lasso. He’s starred with David Schwimmer in the sitcom Intelligence, which he wrote and co-produced. For his live shows he created the much-loved Mr Swallow, a peevish and pedantic magician – who has also attracted millions of views on social media. Nick's musical choices include Copland, Beethoven, Dvorak and Prokofiev.

Lola Young, Baroness Young of Hornsey, grew up in care, and when she left school, she worked first for the gas board, then as a social worker and as an actor on stage and television. The idea that she would one day sit in the House of Lords never crossed her mind. When she was in her early 30s she decided to study for a degree. That led to a PhD, academic posts and eventually a Professorship in Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. She entered the House of Lords as a crossbench peer 20 years ago, where she has campaigned for change in areas such as modern slavery and fast fashion. She recently wrote a memoir called Eight Weeks, in which she pieces together her upbringing, drawing on care records and her own reflections on her childhood. Her music choices include works by Ravel, Errolyn Wallen, Philip Glass and Puccini. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Rupert Everett left school at 16 to train as an actor and first shot to wider fame in 1984 as a dashing public schoolboy in the film Another Country.Since then his career has been defiantly unpredictable: he’s starred in Hollywood films, taken leading roles on stage in the West End and on Broadway, and directed, written and played the lead in a passion project about Oscar Wilde’s final years.He’s made documentaries and written three candid and acclaimed memoirs. Most recently he’s turned to short stories with a collection called The American No, drawing on ideas he had pitched to film producers, all of which were rejected. His musical passions include works by Handel, Purcell, Wagner and Mahler.Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock readily admits that her childhood television viewing played a vital role in her eventual choice of career: she loved Star Trek and The Clangers - the animated children’s show featuring little whistling mice living on a moon-like planet. Along with coverage of the Apollo missions, they helped to inspire a journey which led her to become one of the UK’s leading space experts. She’s also a passionate science communicator, and a familiar face on our screens, as co-presenter of The Sky at Night.Maggie is an authority on telescopes and space imaging, and was part of the James Webb Space Telescope team, launched by NASA in 2021. This telescope used ground-breaking technology to produce strikingly clear pictures of stars we’ve never seen before, changing how we understand the universe. Her musical passions include works by Bach, Dvorak and Purcell, as well as music inspired by the moon and by distant planets. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Bryan Ferry has been a very familiar voice for more than 50 years, as the co-founder of Roxy Music and as a solo artist and songwriter. When Roxy Music first appeared on Top of the Pops in 1972, millions of viewers suddenly saw something new: an extravagantly dressed band, featuring an early synthesizer, an oboe, and Bryan leading from an upright piano, wearing a sparkling black and green jacket. 'This one definitely arrived from Planet Mars', according to one critic. It was a performance which helped to propel Bryan to stardom, and a career which has produced two dozen studio albums, and numerous international hits, as well as explorations of jazz and the songs of Bob Dylan: his most recent release, Retrospective, includes a new version of Dylan’s 1965 song She Belongs to Me. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Bryan reflects on his early days in County Durham, the role of his art school education and his approach to song writing. His musical choices include works by Prokofiev, Elgar, Mahler and Charlie Parker. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Brian Cox has enjoyed a prolific career in theatre, film and television over the last 60 years.Born in Dundee, he was obsessed by film from an early age and when he left school he worked behind the scenes at Dundee Rep theatre. He soon fell in love with the life he saw there and moved to London to train as an actor. Over the years he’s never been afraid to take on difficult, unlikeable characters, including Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter, Hermann Goering in Nuremberg and most recently the terrifying media tycoon and patriarch Logan Roy in the TV series Succession, for which he won a Golden Globe.On stage Brian has played King Lear at the National Theatre and won Olivier awards for his performances in Titus Andronicus and Rat in the Skull. In 2023 he portrayed the composer J S Bach in a play called The Score at the Theatre Royal, Bath. His musical choices include Bach, Mahler, Verdi and Joni Mitchell.Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker(This is an extended version of a programme first broadcast in 2023.)

The American writer Garth Greenwell won widespread acclaim for his first novel, What Belongs to You, including the British Book Award for the Debut of the Year in 2016. This success would have surprised his high-school teachers in Kentucky. As a teenager, he failed English and decided to follow a very different path: he turned to singing and eventually trained as an opera singer. Studying music led him back to literature – writing poems, novels and working as a teacher in Bulgaria. His most recent novel, Small Rain, focuses on a severe medical emergency which leads to deep meditations on our vulnerability, life and love. Garth's musical passions include works by Mahler, Britten, Richard Strauss and the 16th century English composer John Taverner. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Sarah Ogilvie is a lexicographer and a proud and self-confessed word nerd: languages are her passion and are at the heart of her writing and scholarship. She worked as an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary and went on to write a book about the thousands of volunteers around the world who submitted words for its first edition. She has researched endangered languages in Australia, North America and most recently Indonesia. She is also the co-author of Gen Z Explained, where she analysed how 16-25-year-olds communicate with each other, in words, images and emojis. She’s currently a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. Her musical choices include Monteverdi, Allegri, Mozart and Nina Simone. Presenter: Michael Berkeley Producer: Clare Walker

The costume designer Jenny Beavan has won three Academy Awards for three very different films: the elegant Merchant Ivory drama Room with a View; the post-apocalyptic Mad Max: Fury Road; and most recently the Disney film Cruella, for which she created a huge, vibrant parade of 1970s-inspired fashion. She’s received a further nine Oscar nominations across her 40 year career. She found just the right top hat for Colin Firth in the King’s Speech and ditched the deerstalker in favour of a bowler for Robert Downey Jr in Sherlock Holmes. And despite claiming she has “never been interested in fashion”, she re-created striking Dior outfits for Mrs Harris Goes to Paris. Jenny's music choices include Handel, Mendelssohn, Sondheim and - with a nod to the film the King's Speech - Beethoven. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Lucian Msamati has played leading roles on our most famous stages: Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus at the National Theatre, Iago in Othello at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Estragon opposite Ben Whishaw in Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. He started out performing – in his words – ‘for farmers sitting on beer crates in rural Africa, with tables for a stage’. And when he decided to leave Zimbabwe, where he began his career, to see if he could make it in the UK, he had to work as a cleaner to pay the bills. His perseverance paid off: as well as success on stage, he's appeared in high-profile TV shows, including Game of Thrones and the Number One Ladies Detective Agency. After his role in Amadeus, it’s no surprise to find Mozart among his musical passions, which also include Satie, Tchaikovsky and an unusual track by Stevie Wonder.Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Jay Rayner has his dream job: he loves writing and he loves food, and for the past 25 years he’s been the restaurant critic for the Observer. Jay is also familiar as a broadcaster, appearing as a judge on Masterchef, and hosting The Kitchen Cabinet on Radio 4. His recent book, Nights Out At Home, provides recipes to enable readers to create some of his favourite restaurant dishes in their own kitchens. He started out as a news journalist, after growing up in a house in which his mother – Claire Rayner – was a prolific magazine and newspaper columnist and the author of dozens of books.Jay has a very public musical passion: he performs as a jazz pianist, leading his own band in venues around the country. His choices include music by Rimsky-Korsakov and Madeleine Dring, along with a classic Broadway overture and jazz from Michel Petrucciani. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Ann Cleeves is one of Britain’s most successful and prolific crime writers, reaching millions of readers around the world. She’s reached millions of television viewers too, with series including Vera and Shetland, adapted from her books. She has written on average a book a year for almost four decades, but success was anything but instant. She was 32 when her first title was published, and she only became a full-time writer in her early fifties. In 2017 she was awarded the Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association, the highest honour in British crime writing, and in 2022 received an OBE for services to reading and libraries. Her choices include music by Britten and Elgar, a film score by Patrick Doyle and fiddle music from the Shetland Islands. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Artist and printmaker Norman Ackroyd was born in Leeds in 1938. He fell in love with the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales, riding around on his bicycle as a young boy and studied art despite his father believing it was a waste of time. He is now one of Britain's most acclaimed contemporary printmakers, with works in collections around the world including the Tate, Rijksmuseum and MoMA. Norman has travelled all over the British Isles to visit what he calls "the farthest lands" which inspire his elemental etchings of rock formations in all weathers. His musical inspirations include Schubert, Beethoven, Bob Dylan and a BBC archive recording of Cwm Rhondda.

Thomas Adès is one of the UK’s foremost and most successful composers. His first opera, Powder Her Face, was premiered in 1995, when he was just 24. With its racy subject matter, based on the life of the Duchess of Argyll, it put him squarely on the musical map, winning widespread critical acclaim. His catalogue now includes almost 90 works, with commissions from the world’s leading orchestras and festivals, two further operas, The Tempest and The Exterminating Angel, and an epic ballet score for Wayne McGregor, Dante, based on the Divine Comedy.To anticipate the UK premiere of his new work, Aquifer, at the 2024 BBC Proms, Thomas Adès talks to Michael Berkeley about his musical inspirations and passions, including works by Schubert, Chopin, Walton, Stravinsky, Berg and Harrison Birtwistle.Producer Graham Rogers

The best-selling American writer Daniel Handler is perhaps better known by his pen name, Lemony Snicket. Lemony is the cynical narrator of a thirteen book saga called A Series of Unfortunate Events. It’s the tale of three unlucky orphans, Violet, Klaus and Sonny Baudelaire, who are hounded by their guardian, the sinister Count Olaf. The books are a phenomenon, selling more than 70 million copies around the world, along with a film starring Jim Carrey and a series on Netflix. Lemony has published many more books for children, and Daniel has also written seven novels for adults under his own name, as well as a screenplay inspired by Verdi’s Rigoletto. He’s also a keen accordion player and has performed with bands including Death Cab for Cutie, the Decemberists and the Magnetic Fields. Daniel has described himself as an ‘unrepentant classical zealot’ and his musical choices include Dvořák, Scriabin and Berlioz.

The director Clio Barnard won prizes and critical acclaim for her first feature film The Arbor: it blended fact and fiction to depict the short, troubled life of the brilliant Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar. Since then she’s taken on a wide range of British stories. She directed Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston in The Essex Serpent, a six part adaptation of the best-selling book by Sarah Perry. She returned to Bradford for Ali and Ava, a love story which won a BAFTA nomination for outstanding British film, and for The Selfish Giant, the tale of two children trying to make money from selling scrap metal. Music often plays an important part in her films, and her choices include Alice Coltrane, Biber and Philip Glass.

Richard Thompson began his career as a guitarist and a songwriter when he was still a teenager – and six decades on, his passion for making and sharing music is as strong as ever. In the late 1960s he co-founded the pioneering folk-rock band Fairport Convention. In 1969 alone, they released three albums. All featured the voice of Sandy Denny, and one - Liege and Lief - was later acclaimed as the most influential folk album of all time. In the early 1970s, Richard left the band to form a decade-long musical partnership with his then wife Linda. He’s now spent over 30 years as a solo artist, winning an Ivor Novello Award for songwriting, a Lifetime Achievement Award from BBC Radio 2 and countless plaudits for his guitar playing. Richard's music choices include Beethoven, Purcell, Britten and Manuel de Falla.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has long been passionate about food – not just about what we eat and how we cook it, but about how it’s produced and the wider environmental consequences of our appetites. He first appeared on our TV screens in 1995 in A Cook on the Wild Side - foraging for roadkill and frying up woodlouse fritters, earning him the nickname Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-it-all.He went on to document his early attempts as a smallholder trying to produce seasonal, ethical food in the River Cottage series on Channel 4. Out of this came the highly successful River Cottage Cookbook. Over two dozen books have followed – the latest of which is How to Eat 30 Plants a Week. He’s also enjoyed success as a food campaigner. Hugh’s Fish Fight brought about changes in fisheries law at the European level, Britain’s Fat Fight examined the national obesity crisis and War on Waste challenged supermarkets and the fast food industry to change how they operate. Hugh's music choices include Beethoven, Schubert, Verdi and Keith Jarrett.

Olivia Laing has won prizes and critical acclaim for her books, but readily admits that she led quite a wild life before becoming a writer: she dropped out of university, lived in a treehouse on an anti-road protest and later trained and worked as a herbalist. Her non-fiction books include The Trip to Echo Spring, which examined how writers who were damagingly addicted to alcohol could still produce great literature. She drew on her own experience of extreme loneliness in New York to write The Lonely City, which blended memoir with reflections on the works of artists including Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol. Her first novel, Crudo, was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the James Tait Memorial Prize. And most recently she’s written The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise. It’s an account of how she’s restoring a walled garden in Suffolk - and an investigation into the history of gardens and the solace and pleasure they can bring.Olivia's music choices include Puccini, Purcell, Wagner and Bach.