Summary
Should we be worried about the rise in Covid infections? Adam is joined in the studio by Newscast regular, the BBC’s James Gallagher.
Political correspondent Ione Wells gives us the latest from Westminster following allegations that Chris Pincher groped two men. He’s now been suspended as a Tory MP.
And Dragons’ Den star and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett talks to Adam about podcasting with Matt Hancock and his love of musicals.
Today’s Newscast was made by Tim Walklate, with Daniel Wittenberg, Cordelia Hemming and Alix Pickles. The technical producer was Michael Regaard. The editor was Jonathan Aspinwall.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts |
| 0:04.9 | Hello, I've just got a home in its half past five on Friday afternoon and an email has |
| 0:08.8 | landed from the Conservative Party, saying that they have stripped the whip from Chris |
| 0:13.6 | Pinscher, the now former Deputy Chief Whip. So he was one of the people responsible for |
| 0:19.1 | party discipline and on Thursday night he resigned from that job after admitting that he got |
| 0:27.6 | very drunk the night before and behaving inappropriately and there have been lots of reports about |
| 0:33.1 | what that behaviour was actually like. So he's now going to be sitting as an independent MP |
| 0:38.8 | while Parliament's independent grievance process investigates what may or may not have gone on |
| 0:44.4 | and you'll hear some more details of that in this episode of newscast which we recorded earlier. |
| 0:49.1 | Music Radio Podcasts |
| 0:56.4 | Hello, we're going to combine two newscasts things now. One, a news story which is |
| 1:01.9 | Sheffield Hallum stopping its English literature degree and two are getting BBC people to do exam |
| 1:09.7 | questions. So I've got Brownwyn Jeffries, our education editor here, hello, Brownwyn. |
| 1:13.6 | Hello. And I'm going to set her the exam question off. Describe in your own words what is happening |
| 1:20.2 | Sheffield Hallum with their decision to cancel the English literature degree. |
| 1:24.9 | Well there has been a huge storm about this because Sheffield Hallum has decided to stop from |
| 1:31.6 | 2023 having a standalone English literature course. It will still be possible to study |
| 1:38.3 | English literature at the university as part of a broader English programme along with creative |
| 1:43.6 | writing. So why are so many people exercised about this? We've seen Philip Pullman James Graham, |
| 1:50.6 | other writers saying this is a sign of doom for English literature and we should all be really worried. |
| 1:58.0 | There are a couple of things going on here. One is the question about whether or not measures |
| 2:03.8 | which are coming in which are going to look at how graduates do in terms of finishing their degrees. |
... |
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 2026.