A new series in which each week Stuart Maconie examines the final album by a major artist. This week, Synchronicity by The Police. Released in 1983, it was the band's fifth album and it hit the number one spot on both sides of the Atlantic. In America, it knocked the commercial juggernaut of Michael Jackson's Thriller from the top of the charts, selling over 8 million copies in the process. It also produced five international hit singles, including their most famous track Every Breath You Take. As Sting & co toured the world to promote their most successful release, each night playing 60,000 seater venues, at that point in their career they could genuinely lay claim to being the biggest band on planet Earth.

Robert Sandall hears from Siouxie Sioux, Chrissie Hynde, Viv Albertine of the Slits and X-Ray Spex's Poly Styrene about the difference punk made to women's lives and their place in the music industry.

Six years after his death (7th July 2006) Syd Barrett lives on freeze framed, still young and a striking lost soul of the sixties whose brief moment of creativity outshines those long years of solitude shut away in a terraced house in his home town of Cambridge.

This revealing programme hears how his band Pink Floyd (and family) coped with Barrett's mental breakdown and explores the hurriedly arranged holiday to the Spanish island of Formentera - where the star unravelled. In the programme we also hear about Barrett's pioneering brand of English psychedelic pop typified on early Pink Floyd recordings 'Arnold Layne', 'See Emily Play' and the strange songs on Pink Floyd's impressive debut album 'The Piper At the Gates of Dawn'.

Undoubtedly Barrett's experimentation with the drug LSD affected him mentally and the band members reveal how concerned they were when he began to go catatonic on-stage, playing music that had little to do with their material, or not playing at all. By Spring 1968 Barrett was out of the group and after a brief period of hibernation, he re-emerged in 1970 with a pair of albums, 'The Madcap Laughs' and 'Barrett', but they failed to chart and Barrett retired to a hermit life existing under the watchful gaze of his caring sister Rosemary (featured in the programme).

We hear from David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright (one of the last interviews before his sad passing) about how there was little understanding of mental illness when it came to the drug fused culture of the time. These days a strung out star is hurriedly booked into the Priory and given counselling. As this programme reveals Barrett's mental breakdown was not understood and the steps taken to help him were inappropriate and still rankle the members of Pink Floyd today.

Producer: John Sugar

An in-depth portrait of John Lennon, told through the audio of Jann Wenner's seminal 1970 New York interview with Lennon for Rolling Stone magazine.

It’s 1970 and John Lennon is about to release his first solo album. He’s not long emerged from months of Primal Therapy with its creator, Arthur Janov and he’s about to give his first major interview with Rolling Stone magazine. In the interview, he’ll talk openly about his solo career, the break-up of the world’s most famous band, his marriage and a lot more besides.

Wenner and Yoko Ono also look back on the event, but the focus is very much on Lennon, who seems energised by what he sees as his freedom from the Beatles.

It’s John Lennon at his most honest - and on occasion, his most abrasive.

There is frequent use of strong language.