You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

you can always discover more with lives podcast from BBC Radio 4.

For more information and details of other podcasts, just visit BBC.co.uknot UK slash Radio 4.

My guest this week started training as a quantity surveyor and as so often happens with

quantity surveying decided instead to turn to acting.

And since his first public performance in 1967,

he's led a really delightful wide-ranging career on stage, film, television, radio.

You may have seen him in films like Truly,

Madly, Deeply, A Private Function,

Creation, Miss Potter, Bright Young Things, Richard the Third,

on Television in Classic Serials,

Dramatized Documentaries documentaries or Doctor Who, on stage

in just about every theatrical genre you can think of, and heard him on radio.

And he's currently rehearsing for a show at the Edinburgh Festival.

He is Bill Patterson.

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