Mansfield Is A Town In North Nottinghamshire

You’ve heard of the Cannes Film Festival. You may know about Sundance, the largest independent film festival in the US, too. And now we have the first edition of the Mansfield Town Film Festival, opening on 14 July! We talk to festival director Jay Martin.

If you wanted to give a friend an idea about Mansfield by recommending them five films to watch, which would you choose? As the inaugural Mansfield Film Festival approaches, film critic Muriel Zagha tells us about five great films that capture Mansfield life through the ages. 

As the season ends, we talk to Dale and Ted (his dad) about their staggering Stags adventures and about Mansfield Town FC now and across the past 77 years...

We join Mansfield superstar Bobby Midlander in the studio with producer Mattie Dee as they put the final touches to this year's Christmas number one (fingers crossed).

Today Mansfield has one of best Christmas light displays in the Midlands. Everyone knows that. But did you also know that just 20 years ago it looked as though the lights would be switched off completely? We talk to the man who helped save Christmas, retired local businessman Bill Taylor, who tells us an inspiring tale about what communities can achieve when they make up their minds to bring about positive change.

And if you haven’t seen it before, this clip from 1963 about how Mansfield’s Regent Street got its Christmas angels is well worth five minutes of your time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/christmas_regent_street_angels/zdwhxyc  

John Lennon or Mick Jagger? Keith Richards or Paul McCartney? It didn't matter which you preferred, in the 1960s you could have watched them all strutting their stuff on stage in Mansfield. The wonderful Watko joins us to talk about the Granada and the golden age for entertainment in Mansfield when the best acts in the world descended on the town centre to perform.

Watko's brilliant Granada archive can be found here:

https://thegranadamansfield.co.uk/

Mansfield is an ex-mining town. Everyone knows that. But it's hosted lots of other industries across the centuries too, as Denis Hill says – he also explains that the town is one of the best places to set up a business today. We then take a tour of pit history at one of Mansfield's most engaging visitor attractions: the Nottinghamshire Mining Museum. 

https://www.nottsminingmuseum.org.uk/

We talk to Dale – and his dog, Arnold (also a devoted Stags fan) – about the start to the new season at Field Mill aka the One Call Stadium. Are Mansfield Town FC going up this season? Of course they are!

If you’d like to follow Martin Hibbert on his amazing cycling adventure, his Twitter is @NFFCFancycles. His sponsorship page is bit.ly/3Jv5i1H

Earlier this year a group of local students went on a tour of post-industrial European towns and cities – and came back with some remarkable ideas for the Mansfield of the future. In this episode James Walker leads a discussion of their hopes and aspirations for the town. (But will the Stags really be in the Premier League with Nottingham Forest?)

We talk to Tony Delahunty, managing director of the fantastic Mansfield 103.2, about the pleasures and challenges of running the town’s radio station. The Mansfield area has also been dominating our TV screens recently in the form of Sherwood – Lucy Brouwer reviews James Graham’s six-part drama for us (with a few inevitable spoilers).