BFFs: A Life Built on Friendship
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emily Knight lives with five housemates. One of them is her partner. But this isn't a student house-share. They are all in their 30s, have no plans to break up the group, and Emily can't imagine life without them all. So could the rest of her life be built on these friendships? Traditionally life's big chapters - housebuying, raising kids, retiring - are seen as things you probably do with a romantic partner. In BFFs, Emily meets people from across the UK doing things differently, and asks if a life built on friendship can really work. In Greater Manchester she meets Sam and Sean, renovating the three-bedroom house they bought together last year. Sandra and Lisa reflect on raising their daughters as two single mums together in Hull. In Colchester, Andy, Anne and Barbara are three members of a bigger group of friends living in a co-housing settlement. For them, friendship is a way of guarding against loneliness as they get older. And from the United States, Emily hears about the developing concept of "platonic co-parenting", while writer Rhaina Cohen explains why she feels deep friendships can be unappreciated and misunderstood.
Producers: Paul Martin & Emily Knight A BBC Audio Wales Production for Radio 4
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hello, this is Seriously from BBC Radio 4, and I'm Vanessa Kasule. |
| 0:45.0 | If you love unique documentaries, this is the podcast for you. |
| 0:50.0 | Each week you'll find two new episodes to discover. |
| 0:53.3 | Here comes something unusual, charming and seriously fascinating. |
| 0:58.9 | About six years ago now, myself, my boyfriend Lee, |
| 1:02.4 | and our good friend Alex pooled all of our |
| 1:04.8 | money and bought a house together in East Bristol. Yeah at the time it felt like |
| 1:08.6 | the only option we had really. I wanted to buy a house, you guys wanted to buy a house |
| 1:12.0 | and it seemed like for the money that we had that was the best option |
| 1:18.4 | And it was going to be originally just you and me buying house because Lee was categorically uninterested in |
| 1:24.9 | owning property in any way and we basically bullied him. We definitely co-used |
| 1:29.1 | into buying the house with this. We found a big old half derelict Victorian house. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.