meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
From Our Own Correspondent

From Our Home Correspondent 19/01/2020

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from: Vincent Ni on a Chinese man who, like him, has come to Britain and is in his mid-thirties - but there the similarities abruptly end. What does living here undocumented mean in practical terms and why does he do it? With the approach of Holocaust Memorial Day, which this year marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Adam Shaw reflects on the striking contemporary relevance of his own father's refugee status and escape from Nazi persecution in places as varied as a country estate in Northumberland and a "Lord of the Flies"-like "school" in Scotland. In a letter addressed to his father's grandchildren, he reveals how this child refugee managed to survive largely alone and ponders whether this story is as remote from our experience as we might first imagine. Emilie Filou visits Pembrokeshire to meet the bug champions of St Davids and how an entomologist's start-up, created with her chef husband, is trying to influence how children think about what they eat. Can their bold ideas wreak a revolution in the city of the country's patron saint? In Kent petrol-head Martin Gurdon ponders the reasons for - and implications of - today's teenagers not driving as much as previous generations. And in Middlesbrough, Martin Vennard finds that while the town is proud of its explorer son 250 years on from James Cook's exploration of the Antipodes, it doesn't necessarily know a great deal about him. And that matters, he says, because Cook's life has significant contemporary relevance for today's Tees-siders. Producer: Simon Coates

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds.

0:02.0

Thank you for downloading from our home correspondent on BBC Radio 4.

0:06.0

I'm Michelle Hussein and this time changing attitudes to cars and driving.

0:11.0

We're on the road in Kent for one of our pieces.

0:13.7

We also have the people who want to change your attitude to eating insects

0:18.2

and are starting with putting them into a school lunch bolognese.

0:22.4

Captain Cook's arrival in Australia. into a school lunch bolognese.

0:23.0

Captain Cook's arrival in Australia 250 years on,

0:27.0

as viewed from his tea-side birthplace,

0:30.0

and life lessons for us all,

0:32.0

as one correspondent remembers his late father, a Jewish refugee from the Nazis.

0:38.0

First though, when police discovered last October that a lorry and graze in Essex contained the bodies of 39 people,

0:46.2

they were initially believed to be from China.

0:49.1

In fact, they were all Vietnamese nationals, some as young as 15. Soon after journalist Vincent Knee heard

0:56.4

the news he received a call from a fellow Chinese with his story of the risks

1:01.6

and fears that accompany an undocumented life.

1:05.0

I was sipping my coffee on Saturday morning when the phone ran.

1:09.0

It was not a familiar number and the man's voice was not known to me.

1:14.4

Are you Vincent? he asked with audible nervousness.

1:18.8

I was hoping it was the Chinese man from Manchester I had been trying to reach.

1:25.0

It's me, he responded, as if he knew that I had been waiting for him to ring me.

1:30.0

You can call me Gary, he said in Mandarin, with a slight southern Chinese accent.

...

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 2025.