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Woman's Hour

Kate Hudson, Undercover policing, Sophie Blake, Women on the Left

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.22.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hollywood actor Kate Hudson’s latest movie Song Sung Blue is based on the real life story of Wisconsin couple Mike and Claire Sardina. Kate plays Claire, who along with her husband Mike, played by Hugh Jackman, finds local fame in the 1990s as a Neil Diamond tribute act. Kate tells Anita Rani about the appeal of the role and how she’s now found empowerment and her voice.

Set up in 2015, the Undercover Policing Inquiry is one of the most complicated, expensive and delayed public inquiries in British legal history. At its heart is a series of very serious allegations of systematic abuses by undercover policing units over 40 years, which involved spying on tens of thousands of activists and led to relationships with women who did not know they were being spied on. The BBC's Ayshea Buksh has been following the inquiry closely and joins Anita to explain the latest revelations.

Sophie Blake is a former TV presenter and now a campaigner for cancer charities. She is also a single mother living with stage 4 cancer. She joins Anita, along with her teenage daughter, Maya, to talk candidly about parenting through incurable cancer, what this means for their relationship and why time together, especially around the Christmas holidays, is that much more valuable.

We hear a lot about young men moving to the Right politically, but at the last election young women swung just as strongly, if not more so, to the Left. Why is this so little discussed and what does it mean for the UK’s political future? Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff has been exploring these issues in a new Radio 4 documentary, Left Out: the political radicalisation of young women - and the silence surrounding it. She and Scarlett Maguire from political pollsters, Merlin Strategy, join Anita.

Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

0:07.0

Hello, Greg Jenner here, host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously and then laughs at it.

0:13.4

This Christmas, forget about socks. We've got the best present of all.

0:17.2

Dead people!

0:18.2

All that sounds like zombies. Sorry, it's not zombies. Let me start again.

0:21.8

In our new family-friendly podcast series, dead funny history,

0:25.0

historical figures come back to life

0:26.8

but just long enough to argue with me,

0:28.7

tell their life stories and sometimes get on my nerves.

0:31.8

You're dead to me.

0:32.8

Dead funny history.

0:34.1

Listen on BBC Sounds.

0:36.5

Hello, I'm Anita Rani, and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4.

0:41.5

Good morning, welcome to the programme. Hollywood is popping into the program in the form of actor Kate Hudson.

0:48.9

She's telling us all about her new movie Song Sung Blue in which she stars alongside Hugh Jackman.

0:55.1

Neil Diamond fans will recognise the title. It's based on a true story about a couple who form

1:00.5

a Neil Diamond tribute band. I won't tell you too much other than it's a lovely film for the

1:05.8

festive season. It's a story about love. It's about family. It's about good people. It's a tear

1:10.7

jerker. It's all you need.

1:12.0

So this morning I want to hear about the movie you have to watch at this time of year.

1:17.1

Do you have an annual Christmas film? Is there a ritual around it?

1:20.9

And I don't just mean the usual suspects of elf or it's a wonderful life or die hard or excellent.

...

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