Pakistani popstars, and the hippo and the tortoise

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

We hear from Zoheb Hassen, one half of a sibling duo from Pakistan who topped the charts in countries all over the world with their dancefloor filler, Disco Deewane.

Our guest is BBC radio presenter and Pakistani music fan Raess Khan. He talks about how Pakistani pop music evolved from Zoheb’s success.

Entertainment star Debbie McGee, who is best known for being the assistant and wife of British magician Paul Daniels talks about escaping from Iran at the start of the revolution in 1978.

In 2004 a supermarket fire in Paraguay killed more than 300 people. It was the country’s biggest peacetime disaster. One of the survivors, Tatiana Gabaglio tells her story.

Plus, how one of Bosnia's most famous landmarks, the historic bridge in Mostar, was destroyed by Croat guns during the Bosnian war in 1993

Finally, the unlikely friendship of a hippo and a tortoise following the tsunami in 2004.

Contributors: Zoheb Hassen – former popstar Raess Khan – BBC presenter and Pakistani pop fan Debbie McGee – British celebrity Tatiana Gabaglio – supermarket fire survivor in Paraguay Mirsad Behram – journalist Eldin Palata – cameraman Dr Paula Kahumbu – wildlife conservationist

(Photo: Nazia and Zoheb Hassen in 1982. Credit: BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's like driving a car under an avalanche, but you're taunting the avalanche rather than trying to get away from it
0:08.4	Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service
0:13.0	Find it wherever you get your BBC Podcasts.
0:16.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:26.1	Max Pearson the past brought to life by those who were there. This week a
0:30.4	survivor's story of a supermarket fire in Paraguay that killed more than 300 people in 2004.
0:37.0	It started off with a huge explosion that came from the restaurant area and then the roof started burning and falling down. And people
0:46.5	are running in all directions, including me and my neighbour.
0:50.3	Plus the destruction of the ancient bridge at Moss Star in the Balkan conflict and Debbie McGee a British TV star caught up in the Iranian Revolution.
1:00.0	When we were looking at the buildings around us were all on fire. Yes you think what's going to happen to you,
1:07.6	but I think as a human being your brain doesn't let you think I might die. That plus an unlikely friendship between a
1:14.6	hippo and a tortoise coming up later in the podcast. But first how the power of
1:20.5	popular culture can cross any number of cultural and ethnic divides.
1:25.3	In the 1980s, a brother and sister from Pakistan topped the charts in countries all over the
1:30.5	world with their dance floor hit disco divani.
1:34.0	Nasia and Zohab Hassan were the first teenagers ever to make a hit record in India.
1:38.0	Sohab has been telling Vicky Francum about their rise to fame.
1:42.0	It's 1981. Mickey Farnam about their rise to fame.
1:43.0	It's 1981, and in nightclubs across the globe,
1:47.0	this song is spending up the dance doors.
1:50.0	This would be money. On the surface, Nasea and Zohabh her son are just wealthy middle-class teenagers studying hard for exams who keep themselves very much to themselves.
2:08.0	Little do those around them realize the adulations the Hassan's attract whenever they set foot in India.
	...

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