Hollywood Smiles and Sweet Memories
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kate Adie introduces correspondents stories: Mary Harper goes to the Syrian dentist bringing Hollywood smiles to Somaliland; Guy Hedgecoe travels to the highlands of Spanish Catalonia, a stronghold of calls for independence; Melissa Van der Klugt is in clouds of flour in Pune, in western India, where they can't get enough of an English biscuit; Andrew Dickson has gone to the Urals and comes across a new presidential museum asking people to re-consider Russia's wild 90s, when a red-faced Boris Yeltsin was in charge; and Joanna Robertson is in the City of Light, amid thousands of bulbs, spreading their magical fairytale twinkle across Paris.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | It's the festive season and we hope you enjoy this serving of From Our Own Correspondent, |
| 0:08.0 | which was broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday the 24th of December. It's introduced by Kate A. D. |
| 0:15.6 | Hello, tasty morsels for Christmas Eve from our correspondence, but it's not all about |
| 0:20.7 | food. In Spain's Catalan Heartland, anger simers and the government serves |
| 0:25.6 | up a renewed charm offensive. From Puna we hear the secret recipe of a very special biscuit made in India by way of Shropshire and Lancashire. |
| 0:36.6 | In Russia the 1990s were frequently wild and violent with an increasingly red-faced Boris Yeltsin at the helm. |
| 0:44.6 | But now we're being invited to rethink those years. |
| 0:48.6 | And we're in Paris, the city of lights, literally. |
| 0:51.6 | They're everywhere at this time of year, twinkling their magic through the |
| 0:54.8 | grey and polluted skies. |
| 0:58.8 | If you're a refugee fleeing a war zone, you wouldn't think that Somalia, with its reputation for civil war, |
| 1:05.2 | Islamic militant violence and pirates, would be an obvious destination of choice. |
| 1:11.1 | But in the northwestern region, which broke away from the rest of the country 25 years ago and declared |
| 1:16.4 | itself the Republic of Somaliland, life is more peaceful. |
| 1:21.9 | Somaliland is not recognized internationally as an independent state, but it's now |
| 1:26.1 | become a refuge for people fleeing wars in the Middle East, as Mary Harper, a regular visitor |
| 1:32.0 | there, has been finding out. |
| 1:34.0 | In the far-flung town of Burrau, where nomads are losing livestock to a devastating drought, |
| 1:40.0 | I see signs displaying pictures of dental disasters, mouths with wildly crooked discoloured |
| 1:46.8 | teeth, gaps where others are missing, all miraculously transformed into sparkly white Hollywood smiles. |
| 1:54.8 | Above these images are the words Syrian dentist. |
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