Matt Lucas chooses Freddie Mercury of Queen. The author of Bohemian Rhapsody, Lesley-Ann Jones, joins him to dissect a legend.To what extent can a troubled childhood contribute to an adult's need to perform? Farrokh Bulsara was born in Zanzibar, sent to school in India, and fled revolution in Zanzibar to Feltham, Middlesex, aged 18. His family ...…

The arrival of Lotus shook up motor sport in 1960s and 70s. In Formula One, Colin Chapman made his cars lighter and quicker than anyone else, often challenging the rules. But not everything he designed was safe. On the roads, Lotus sports cars are an icon of the era. To discuss this colourful and controversial life, Matthew Parris is joined by ...…

Matthew Parris meets Suzanne O'Sullivan to discuss her medical and literary hero, Oliver Sacks. She first came across his work on a beach in Thailand, reading his famous collection of case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Joining the discussion is Sacks' partner, the writer and photographer Bill Hayes. Together they discuss the ...…

Ghulam Mohammad, or the Great Gama Pehlwan as he was more commonly known, was a Muslim wrestler born into a Kashmir family in India in 1878. When writer Nikesh Shukla first came across him in a book at the airport, he thought he must be a fictional character- the stories seemed so far-fetched. Gama reportedly drank 10 litres of milk and ate six ...…

Author and Journalist Sathnam Sanghera nominates a Great Life; a man dismissed as a fantasist and a liar in his own lifetime. Alexander Gardner was a Scottish-American soldier, a traveller, an explorer and adventurer - a white man with a tartan turban, who ended up in India in a Maharaja's Sikh Army in the 19th Century, just before the British ...…

Mark Steel makes the case for Charlie Chaplin being one of the most radical comedians of his time. He reckons it's sad that most see Chaplin as that bloke who wore a bowler hat, had a funny walk, waved a cane around and wasn’t even that funny. Mark argues that Charlie Chaplin’s silent films and his "Tramp" character make sense if you look at th ...…

Tim Smit has admired Humphrey Jennings since seeing Danny Boyle’s Olympics Opening Ceremony in 2012. Jennings was a film maker, artist, and co-founder of the Mass Observation Movement. Many of the scenes in that memorable Olympic ceremony were inspired by his work. His films about ordinary British life during the Second World War are a poetic t ...…

Comedian Russell Kane nominates the novelist Evelyn Waugh, with help from literary critic Ann Pasternak Slater. Chaired by Matthew Parris.One of the greatest prose stylists of 20th century literature, not to mention one of the funniest, novelist Evelyn Waugh also has a reputation for being a snob, a bully, and a dyed in the wool reactionary. Ho ...…

In the summer of 2018 the name of Laura Ingalls Wilder was erased from a children's literary medal set up in her honour six decades ago. Readers of the Little House on the Prairie series of books were widely perplexed, but the original American pioneer girl now finds herself at the centre of the culture wars in the US.Nominating her is the broa ...…

Benazir Bhutto made history when, aged 35, she became the first democratically elected female Prime Minister of a Muslim majority country. Her family are one of world’s most famous political dynasties, but also one blighted by tragedy – murder, feud and assassinations. Bhutto has been nominated by Christina Lamb, author and chief foreign corres ...…

The Olympic rower Helen Glover is Matthew Parris' guest this week, choosing the life of the mountaineer Alison Hargreaves to discuss with the help of her biographer Ed Douglas. Alison Hargreaves' short life was defined by her love of the mountains. She became interested in climbing as a teenager and devoted her life to pursuing ever greater cha ...…

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, this is an interesting world I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, don't you think?"Douglas Noel Adams wasn't even fifty when he died in 2001, but his imagination had already roamed far. He created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Meaning of Liff and several episodes of Doctor W ...…

For Cherie Blair, leading barrister and QC, picking her great life was simple - her role model is Rose Heilbron, England's first woman judge. When Cherie was growing up in Liverpool, Rose Heilbron was always the name that excited her grandmother the most. Rose was a barrister and when she was arguing a case before a jury in her home city, Cheri ...…

Greg Jenner on the great song and dance man Gene Kelly, star of Singin' In The Rain. "He was so much better than he had any right to be."Born in Pittsburgh in 1912, Gene Kelly was a broad-shouldered Irish American whose first love was ice hockey. But according to his biographer, Ruth Leon, he revolutionised movie-making by making the camera dan ...…

Patricia Greene, the actress who plays Jill Archer, makes the case for Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, or Bess of Hardwick as she's more commonly known. Like her heroine, Patricia was born in Derby and was aware of the nearby grand stately home Hardwick Hall. 'More glass than wall' was the local saying; as the key feature of this 1590s house ...…

Towards the end of his comic rant about the descent of man, Simon Evans does something very dangerous. He starts to read out to his audience an extract of John Stuart Mill. Potential comedy death? In this programme he explains why the famous Victorian philosopher with the squirly hair is his idea of genius. As well as On Liberty, Mill wrote The ...…

"We are ready to take the Pole in any kind of weather on offer," wrote the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in December 1911. Born in 1872, Amundsen is part of a group of men - including the playwright Henrik Ibsen and the explorer Fridjtof Nansen - who gave shape to Norwegian identity just as the country broke free from Sweden and achieved independenc ...…

"Suddenly this light comes into your life" - says Hanif Kureishi, referring to his hero, his great life, David Bowie. Hanif, an author, screenwriter and film maker went on to become friends with Bowie in the 1990's after they worked together when Bowie wrote the soundtrack to Kureishi's TV adaptation 'The Buddha of Suburbia'. For Hanif it was a ...…

Catherine the Great assumed power in a St Petersburg coup, extended the empire into Crimea, Ukraine and Alaska. is Russia's longest lasting female ruler, and wasn't even Russian herself. All of this intrigues Dame Barbara Stocking, former head of Oxfam, who admires Catherine's leadership style.Biographer Virginia Rounding provides the details o ...…

Hedy Lamarr was described by her studio as the most beautiful woman in the world. A recent film, called Bombshell, argued that she was a brilliant inventor as well. But what was going on behind that wonderful face? Suzy Klein, host of the BBC Proms, tells Matthew Parris that this was an intriguing woman who continually reinvented herself. She l ...…

For soul singer Mica Paris, when she first dreamt of becoming a singer it was Josephine Baker who inspired her most. Baker was a young black American dancer who became an overnight sensation in Paris in 1925 after performing wild, uninhibited routines in the skimpiest of costumes. So can Mica Paris make the case for Baker who wore a string of b ...…

The actor Simon Callow nominates one of the giants of the golden age of Hollywood, Orson Welles. He once said of himself he 'started at the top and worked his way down' never managing to recreate the success he had aged 26 with Citizen Kane, which he wrote, directed and starred in. Welles' friend and collaborator Henry Jaglom talks about knowin ...…

Stand up comedian and political commentator Ayesha Hazarika's hero is Jayaben Desai who led a two year strike at Grunwick Film processing factory in North London. The majority of the workers were migrant women and they became known as the 'strikers in sarees'. Matthew Parris remembers the strike in 1976 as he was working in Margaret Thatcher's ...…

Richard Feynman was a physicist who helped design the atomic bomb and won the Nobel Prize. He is the great life choice of businessman Tej Lalvani CEO of his family business Vitabiotics and the newest Dragon on the BBC show Dragon's Den. Feynman was also regarded as something of an eccentric and a free spirit who had a passion for playing the bo ...…

Professor Laura Serrant of Sheffield Hallam University, named as one of the most inspirational figures in healthcare, chooses the life of the black, gay poet and activist Audre Lorde who still inspires the women's movement today. She tells Matthew Parris why Audre has meant so much to her both personally and professionally in her work in nursin ...…

Miles Davis - trumpeter, composer, bandleader - is championed by Adrian Utley of Portishead."He's always been really important in my life, right from early on when my dad used to play him. It was part of the atmosphere of our house."From the early years with Charlie Parker and on via Kind of Blue to playing in front of 600,000 hippies on the Is ...…

The comedian, actor and artist Jim Moir aka Vic Reeves is Matthew Parris' guest and chooses the life of Don van Vliet - the Dadesque musician and painter Captain Beefheart who has influenced many musicians since the 1960s. They are joined by Beefheart's biographer Mike Barnes to discuss the bizarre and complex persona developed by the Californi ...…

Gisela Stuart, the former Member of Parliament for Birmingham Edgbaston makes the case for Joseph Chamberlain to be nominated as her great life.But can she really make the case for this former industrialist who made it to the cabinet but had a knack for splitting political parties and switching allegiances? Jo Chamberlain was first a Liberal th ...…

Liza Tarbuck on Nikola Tesla

Herodotus - father of history or father of lies? Matthew Parris introduces a sparky discussion about a writer whose achievements include a nine book account of a war between east and west - the Persian invasions of Greece. Justin Marozzi proposes him not just as an historian, but as geographer, explorer, correspondent, the world's first travel ...…

Helen Arney, self confessed science nerd, stand-up entertainer, and once nicknamed a "geek songstress", tells Matthew Parris why she's chosen Hertha Ayrton, the pioneering Victorian physicist, inventor and suffragette, as her great life. Ayrton, we hear, was the first woman to be admitted into membership of what is today known as the IET, the I ...…

This week Matthew Parris invites the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England Nazir Afzal who was responsible for convicting the men who sexually abused young girls in Rochdale to nominate a great life. He has chosen Mahatma Gandhi, also a lawyer, whom he says inspired him to speak out on behalf of those who were marginalised and ig ...…

On a field outside Dublin, Daniel O'Connell met and shot a former royal marine in a duel. John d'Esterre had been outraged when O'Connell, the later hero of Catholic emancipation, described the mainly Protestant Dublin corporation as a 'beggarly corporation'. O'Connell later claimed that he had practised with two pistols every week, knowing tha ...…

Marcel Duchamp, the father of conceptual art, and responsible for that famously provocative urinal signed 'R Mutt, 1917', is the great life choice of fellow artist Cornelia Parker. She explains to Matthew Parris why he's influenced not only her work but that of so many other artists since his death in 1968. As an art student in the 1970s she re ...…

Goldfrapp's Will Gregory is centre-stage at the Colston Hall in Bristol to tell Matthew Parris why he feels a kinship with Irish writer Flann O'Brien whose books 'At Swim-Two-Birds' and 'The Third Policeman' are now hailed as literary masterpieces but which only came to prominence after the author's death. Carol Taaffe, who has written about Fl ...…

City Boss Dame Helena Morrissey champions the life of Rachael Heyhoe Flint, the pioneer of women's cricket who was regarded as a ground breaker who ruffled feathers and shook up a male dominated sport.Helena Morrissey who has also made it to the top of her career in a male dominated word of the City, is founder of the 30% Club, a campaign group ...…

Constance Markievicz led an amazing life - a leading figure during the Easter Rising of 1916, she was the first woman elected to Westminster though she never took her seat. Markievicz was born into a wealthy anglo-Irish family and gained her exotic surname from marriage to a Polish count. She was adventurous, flamboyant, committed to woman's ri ...…

Nicholas Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government at the London School of Economics, among other positions, and former Chief Economist at the World Bank. He is also a massive boxing fan and chooses the life of Muhammad Ali to explore with Matthew Parris and sports journalist and boxing commentator Ronald McIntosh. Not only does S ...…

How many people realise the impact Elsie Widdowson had on the way we view nutrition? She was a food scientist who devoted her life to improving the diets of adults and children in Britain and abroad. Matthew Parris hears why Helen Sharman, the first Briton to go into space, thinks Widdowson deserves her nomination. They are joined by Elsie's fr ...…

Matthew Parris and his guest - novelist Tracy Chevalier - discuss the life of Mary Anning, the working class woman from Lyme Regis who discovered full dinosaur skeletons on Dorset's Jurassic Coast and sold them to collectors in the early 1800s. They are joined by Hugh Torrens, Emeritus Professor of History of Science and Technology at the Unive ...…

In 1968 Norman Lewis wrote an article called Genocide in Brazil. The photographs that accompanied it were by Don McCullin. Lewis later said that this one piece of journalism was the great achievement of his life. It led directly to the creation of Survival International and a change in the law relating to the treatment of indigenous people in B ...…

The actress Maxine Peake nominates her working class hero, Ellen Wilkinson, as a great life. Ellen is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of British radical left politics. She joined the Communist party, met Lenin and Trotsky in Moscow and then went on to become one of the Labour Party's youngest people entering parliam ...…

Stephen Fry nominates his hero P.G Wodehouse, a writer who he says simply cheers him up like no one else. Fry wrote to his hero when he was a schoolboy and his most treasured possession is a signed photograph which reads: "To Stephen Fry, All the best, P. G. Wodehouse." P.G Wodehouse was a self-made man, he began as a bank clerk, married a chor ...…

This week it's the turn of Peter Williams, founder of the British retail chain Jack Wills who is nominating Steve Jobs as his great life. For Williams, despite the fact that Steve Jobs was an abrasive and difficult person, it was his ability to predict what people wanted. It was his Apple products that have touched the lives of so many people w ...…

There were so many hoaxes in Andy Kaufman's brief career that for years his fans believed that he wasn't really dead. Kaufman's best known as Latka Gravas in the American sitcom Taxi, and his life was undoubtedly weird. Performance artist, Elvis impersonator, wrestler - he's difficult to pin down. Nominator Iain Lee believes he was a genius, wh ...…

Twice Queen of England and mother of two kings, but have you heard of Emma of Normandy? Doyenne of Whitehall and Westminster journalists, Sue Cameron names William the Conqueror's aunt as her great life. Matthew Parris explores the time 1,000 years ago when England was emerging as a new nation in the decades before the Norman invasion, when the ...…

For Steven Knight, the screen writer and director of Peaky Blinders and Taboo, it was easy to nominate his great life. For him there was just one choice, his all- time hero Sitting Bull. As a young boy growing up in Birmingham in the 1970s, Steven was obsessed with stories and tales of Native Indians. At the age of 13, Steven searched for pen-p ...…

The American born Peaches Golding OBE, Bristol's new Lord Lieutenant and first black female High Sheriff chooses the African American politician Shirley Chisholm who ran unsuccessfully for President in 1972 to discuss with Matthew Parris and the historian Dr. Kate Dossett. Chisholm never expected to win but felt strongly that as a woman, and se ...…

Biographical series presented by Matthew Parris.

Since her death in 1997, it's been fashionable in some quarters to decry the work of Mother Teresa among India's poor. Here fellow Albanian - the opera singer Ermonela Jaho offers an alternative view of the nun who dedicated her life to running homes in Calcutta and later around the world, providing food, shelter and care for the poor and dispo ...…