Norway’s sushi contribution and Laurel and Hardy’s Christmas

The History Hour

BBC

Personal Journals, History, Society & Culture

4.4 • 913 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.

We learn about how a Norwegian businessman brought salmon sushi to Japan in the 1980s.

Our guest is cookbook author Nancy Singleton Hachisu, who tells us more about the history of sushi in Japan and around the world.

We hear about the first opera written for TV in 1950s America and how U.S Marshalls used fake NFL tickets to capture some of Washington DC’s most wanted.

Plus, how disability rights campaigners in India led to a change in the law in 1995 and when Scotland played hockey in Germany during the cold war.

Finally, the story of when Laurel and Hardy spent Christmas at an English country pub.

Contributors:

Bjørn-Eirik – Norwegian businessman who brought salmon sushi to Japan

Nancy Singleton Hachisu – cookbook author

Archive of Gian Carlo Menotti – Italian composer

Stacia Hylton – former U.S Marshall

Javed Abidi – Indian disability rights campaigner

Archive of customers at The Bull Inn – the pub that Laurel and Hardy visited in 1953

Valerie Sinclair – member of Scotland's hockey team who played West Germany in 1961

(Photo: Japanese demonstration to Norwegian royal family. Credit: Bjørn-Eirik Olson)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.0	My Christmas Mix is pure 90s festive nostalgia.
0:11.1	You know, the Christmas songs you listen to on repeat.
0:14.0	Oh, ho!
0:15.7	No, no, no.
0:17.5	I'm all about the big hitting Christmas anthems.
0:20.4	Come on, guys. What about those tunes that really slay? It's Christmas kitchen disco season, surely.
0:26.4	Give me hip-hip-christmas bangers every day. Those Christmas tracks that are straight out of Lapland.
0:30.9	Get all kinds of Christmassy. Just search Christmas music on BBC Sounds.
0:35.8	We did something that no one else had ever done.
0:38.6	There was such an excitement and energy about this moment.
0:43.1	It opened the door for everything that rapidly followed.
0:45.8	Witness history.
0:46.9	History as told by the people who were there.
0:49.4	I was walking in space.
0:51.6	The first man ever to do so, I felt almost insignificant, like a tiny ant
0:57.3	compared to the immensity of the universe. Witness History from the BBC World Service. Listen now.
1:04.2	Search for Witness History, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
1:13.0	Hello and welcome to The History Hour with me, Max Pearson, the amazing characters and
1:17.3	stories that have appeared this week on witness history on the BBC World Service.
1:22.2	And coming up, the disability campaigners who changed the law in India.
1:26.6	People said, what can we do? And I said, well, look,
	...

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