Presidential diamonds and Tupperware parties

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History stories from the BBC World Service. Journalist Claude Angeli discovered French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing received diamonds from a depraved African emperor, which contributed to him losing the presidential election in 1981. How Bosnia’s small Jewish community helped people from all sides of the conflict, during the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s. The story of the gang of thieves, who held up a British Royal Mail train on its journey from Glasgow to London in August 1963. Plus Jean-Michel Basquiat, a young black graffiti artist in the 1980s took the New York art world by storm. His paintings were selling for huge sums of money, but he died before the end of the decade. And the rise and fall of self-made businesswoman Brownie Wise, who inspired an army of US housewives to sell Tupperware at parties. Contributors: Journalist Claude Angeli Journalist Pauline Bock Former vice president of the Jewish community Jakob Finci Author Bob Kealing Journalist Reginald Abbiss Patti Astor, friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat

(Photo: French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Jean-Bédel Bokassa in Bangui, March 1975. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	The captain, you know, he went on the radio and he's like,
0:03.2	We just want to make sure everyone knows he has a Paralympic
0:07.0	on the plane.
0:08.0	On the podium is back with more Olympians and Paralympians sharing their remarkable stories.
0:14.0	On the podium, listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson
0:29.1	the past brought to life by those who were there. This week the Jews of Sarajevo who helped to save Muslims,
0:35.2	Kriats and Serbs during the Balkan conflict in the 1990s.
0:38.7	It's good to remember how important is to help everyone always you can count that the same people or some
0:47.4	other people will help you.
0:49.6	Plus the troubled life and times of the artist Jean-Michel Baskier, the great British train robbery, and the
0:55.6	woman who transformed selling in America with her unusual approach.
0:59.8	They idolized her.
1:01.4	Brownie would offer the dress off her back as a prize for the best selling
1:06.5	dealer and women would lose 20 or 30 pounds so they can fit into the dress.
1:10.9	All that coming up in the podcast, but we begin in 1979 when France was rocked by a political
1:17.9	scandal.
1:18.9	It was discovered that President Valerie Skardisthan had received gifts of diamonds worth hundreds of thousands of dollars
1:25.2	from the deposed former Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic.
1:29.2	The scandal damaged the President's reputation and contributed to him losing the election in
1:33.7	1981. Ben Henderson has been speaking to the journalist who uncovered the
1:37.8	diamond story which made headlines around the world.
1:40.7	What connects a cannibalistic tyrant, a lofty president, a tray of diamonds and a liable
	...

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