Front Row

Skin - the singer, songwriter, DJ and lead vocalist of the multi-million-selling British rock band Skunk Anansie - looks back over her life in her new memoir It Takes Blood and Guts.

Born to Jamaican parents, Skin - real name Deborah Dyer - grew up in Brixton in the 1970s which influenced her musical direction. The shaven-headed singer reflects on how a gay, black, working-class girl with a vision fought poverty and prejudice to write songs, produce and front her own band, headline Glastonbury, and become one of the most influential women in British rock.

Presenter Tom Sutcliffe

We discuss the future of music making in the UK.

We speak to Mel C, formerly Sporty Spice, about her eighth studio album, Melanie C, which reflects her new influences – as a dance music DJ, an LGBTQ+ icon and mother to a music-mad daughter. She joins John Wilson to talk about musical reinvention, putting aside her demons and how to read the dancefloor when you’re the DJ.

Freelance musicians unable to work are receiving 20% of what they previously earned. Yesterday outside the Houses of Parliament and in Centenary Square in Birmingham musicians gathered and played Mars from Holst's 'The Planets' - 20% of it. John Wilson talks to the violinist, Jessie Murphy, whose idea this was.

Marie-Louise Muir, who presents Radio Ulster's arts show, reports on the impact of new Covid regulations that effectively ban live music in Northern Ireland.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has spoken of ways 'for new business models to emerge' and John hears from Dominique Fraser, who has been running a successful music venue The Boileroom in Guildford for years, but is now radically changing her operation to survive, and it doesn’t involve music.

We pay tribute to the US musician, Johnny Nash, who’s died at the age of eighty. He was best known for his reggae-inspired hit I Can See Clearly Now and for his record company which helped launch the career of his friend Bob Marley.

Presenter: John Wilson

We announce the winner of the 2020 BBC National Short Story Award and the Young Writers' Award on its 15th anniversary.

Judges Irenosen Okojie and Jonathan Freedland discuss the merits of the entries from the shortlisted authors. In contention for the £15,000 prize are Caleb Azumah Nelson, Jan Carson, Sarah Hall, Jack Houston and Eley Williams.

Writer and musician Testament performs Point Blank - a poem on writing specially commissioned to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the prize.

Radio 1 presenter Katie Thistleton will announce the winner of the BBC Young Writers' Award and consider the strengths and emerging themes of the stories with fellow judge Laura Bates.

The BBC National Short Story Award is presented in conjunction with Cambridge University and First Story.

Later this month Front Row is running a series of Booker Prize book groups with the six shortlisted authors. To take part email [email protected]

Presenter : Tom Sutcliffe

The London Film Festival opens this week with Mangrove, by the Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen. It’s the first in an ambitious five-part film series looking at individual stories about the West Indian Community in London from 1968 to 1985. Anna Smith joins us to review Mangrove, the story of a notorious 1970 prosecution that exposed police harassment of Black Britons, as well as to give us her picks from this year's London Film Festival, and to discuss the news about Cineworld's announcement of the closure of its venues.

Front Row gives the first modern day performance of a lost piece by the great English baroque composer Henry Purcell. The song was recently discovered by Purcell scholar Rebecca Herissone, Professor of Music at Manchester University, who explains the significance of her find.

Grace Jones has had a varied and highly successful career as a model, singer/songwriter and actress, lasting more than four decades. A new exhibition Grace Before Jones at Nottingham Contemporary looks at her life and her achievements. We speak with curator Cedric Fauq.

Presenter Samira Ahmed

Purcell’s O That my Grief was performed on Front Row by The English Concert

Radha Blank won the Directing Prize at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival for her debut film, The 40-Year-Old Version. She also wrote and stars in the movie which is inspired by her own experiences as a Black New York based playwright and rapper approaching her 40th birthday and frustrated at the lack of creative opportunities. It’s been praised as astute and funny and it’s filmed in black and white echoing many iconic New York films. She joins u to talk about the making of the movie.

We talk to Chuck D, the frontman and lyricist of pioneering hip hop group Public Enemy. More than 30 years on from their debut, the group's new album 'What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?' addresses contemporary American issues, including the Coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter.

Novelist Lionel Shriver and journalist Michael Goldfarb make up our Friday Review Panel. They’ll be discussing two new US political dramas: The Trial of the Chicago 7, Aaron Sorkin’s film about the prosecution of Vietnam War protesters in 1969, and Sky Atlantic drama The Comey Rule, based on the memoir of the FBI boss James Comey that he wrote after being sacked by Trump, starring Brendan Gleeson as the President.

This week the Governor of California declared a state of emergency in Napa, Sonoma and Shasta counties because of devastating wildfires. Dana Gioia, who was the Poet Laureate of California until last year, lives in Sonoma, on a wooded hillside, in a wooden house. He reads the piece he has written especially for Front Row about trying to live and work as a poet while the country around you is in flames and, at any moment, you might have to flee.

Presenter: John Wilson

Graham Norton is one of the most successful entertainment presenters in British broadcasting. He has a popular Radio 2 show, is the face of the BBC's Eurovision song contest coverage and, above all, his Friday night BBC1 chat show draws the biggest names to his sofa. His shows have won him nine BAFTAs and he begins a new series on BBC1 tomorrow.

His journey is a fascinating one: raised in county Cork, he went to drama school in London with the plan to be an actor, but after a start in stand up and TV comedy, including the sitcom Father Ted, it was quickly the chat show that became his natural home. More recently Norton has won recognition as a best selling novelist, always drawing on his Irish roots.

His latest novel, Home Stretch, is about the consequences of a fatal car accident. The lives of the families involved are shattered and the rifts between them are felt throughout the small Irish town where they live. Connor is one of the survivors, but staying among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as living with the shame of having been the driver. He leaves the only place he knows for another life, taking his secrets with him.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main image: Graham Norton

Miss Virginia is a new film based on the story of Virginia Walden Ford’s fight to create positive educational opportunities for African-American students in Washington D.C. and stars Uzo Aduba. Elle Osili-Wood reviews.

Australian singer Helen Reddy has died at the age of 77. Her biggest hit, I am Woman, became an anthem for the feminist movement. Writer Lucy O’Brien was an admirer and a fan, and she joins Samira to discuss why Helen Reddy is crucial to the story of women in popular music, and also feminism.

Sarah Nicolls discusses her new composition, 12 Years, inspired by the 2018 IPCC report that said we have 12 years to prevent irreversible climate change. Sarah performs the narrative work that includes newspaper headlines and invented characters on her unique Inside-Out Piano, a vertical grand designed so that she can play the strings directly to create an array of incredible sounds.

The choreographer Gary Clarke grew up in 1980s Grimethorpe, North Yorkshire, at the time one of Europe’s most deprived towns. So when he was asked to create a piece reflecting the experience of lockdown, his dance was inspired by a 1903 film of Alice in Wonderland, but draws heavily on the experiences of his youth.

Presenter Samira Ahmed

The 17th Century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi is the subject of a major new exhibition at London's National Gallery. Critic Waldemar Januszczak considers the importance of the artist who struggled against the male Establishment, but who gained fame, patronage and adoration in her lifetime.

No Masks is a new co-production between Sky Arts and the Theatre Royal Stratford East; a TV drama based on the real-life testimonies of key workers during the pandemic, starring Russell Tovey and Anya Chalotra. Theatre Royal’s Artistic Director Nadia Fall discusses the series of monologues she’s co-written alongside playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz.

As TV talent show winners Little Mix launch their own TV talent show (Little Mix: The Search) to find a band to accompany them on their next tour, we discuss the creation of manufactured pop bands with music journalist Roisin O'Connor from the Independent and Simon Webbe from the best-selling boy band Blue.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Earlier today the shortlist for the 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction was announced. Two time winner Hilary Mantel has not made the list for the final part of her Cromwell series and four out of six of the books chosen are by debut authors. John speaks to Chair of Judges Margaret Busby and critics Sara Collins and Toby Lichtig give their verdict on the chosen few.

Today Arts Council England published two new pieces of research into the value of the cultural institutions it funds to our high streets and how they are reanimating local economies. For instance, more than 300 cultural venues are in unemployment hotspots. There are 500 cafes in cultural centres across the country – almost as many outlets as Pret a Manger. Sir Nichola Serota, the Chair of ACE, unpicks this work with John Wilson, who will ask him, too, what is happening with the £1.57 billion pledged by the government to save the arts and livelihoods of artists. Last week on Front Row Lucy Noble, who runs the Royal Albert Hall, said that no one had yet received any money.

Sarah Hall has been nominated for the National Short Story Award for the fourth time for her story The Grotesques. Ahead of the story being broadcast on Radio 4 tomorrow, we speak to the writer about exploring covert control, scapegoating and dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships in her story.

Presenter: John Wilson

Michael Kiwanuka said he was seriously surprised when he won the 2020 Mercury Prize last week. Tom Sutcliffe talks to the singer-songwriter about dropping out of his music degree, hanging out in Hawaii with Kanye West and asks why such modesty when his self-titled album had rave reviews on release, and reached number 2 in the charts.

Director Joe Mantello on his new film version of The Boys in the Band, Mart Crowley’s ground-breaking 1968 play about a group of gay friends at a birthday party in New York.

As the Covid crisis continues, last week Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced viable jobs will receive support. As the creative industries rely on freelance workers Front Row discusses what this means for them, first talking to set designer Rebecca Brower, who has lost most of her work this year because theatres are closed. Plus Philippa Childs, head of the union Bectu, to which many freelance creatives belong, explains why so many won’t qualify for help. And director Fiona Laird offers an overview, suggesting ways to create future work for freelancers in the industry.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Main image: Michael Kiwanuka