From a background of sculpture, Sophia creates installations, sets and objects for audiences and performers to inhabit, manipulate and transform. Much of her work is participatory and interactive, collaborating with artists in theatre, dance and music and with the general public.

Recent work includes: Would You Bet Against Us? (Told by an Idiot, Birmingham Rep); Space to Be (Oily Cart); Get Happy (Told by an Idiot, Barbican); All You Need Is LSD (Told by an Idiot, Birmingham Rep); The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk (Kneehigh Theatre, Bristol Old Vic); The Paper Man (Improbable Theatre, Norfolk & Norwich Festival); Journey to the Impossible (Little Soldier Productions, The Bike Shed Theatre); And The Horse You Rode In On (Told by an Idiot, Barbican, Brighton Festival, Theatre Royal Plymouth); 16 Singers (Katherine Morley, Dance Umbrella, Theatre Royal Bath); Phenomenal People (Fuel, WOW Festival); In This Place (Pentabus Theatre); A Crash Course in Cloudspotting (Raquel Meseguer Zafe, MAYK, Coventry City of Culture 2021, Unlimited, Camden Alive); Parallelist (Clay Gold & Laura Moody, Aldeburgh Festival).

Dennis Mortimer was born in Liverpool April 1952 and his professional football career spanned 721 league, Cup and European games. He was captain of the Aston Villa team which won the 1st Division Championship in 1981 and the European Cup in 1982.

Dennis' career began at Coventry City F.C. in 1967 with a 3 year apprenticeship. Dennis signed his first Professional contract in 1969 and transferred to Aston Villa in 1975 for £170.000, after which he transferred to Brighton and Hove Albion and then to Birmingham City. He was also loaned to Sheffield Utd in 1984/85.

After retiring from Professional football, Dennis had positions at the PFA and the FA.

About Omar Elerian

Omar Elerian is a freelance director, dramaturg and theatre-maker. Italian of Palestinian descent, Omar trained in Italy and then graduated from Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris in 2005.He was the resident Associate Director at the Bush Theatre from 2012 to 2019, where he commissioned and directed some of the theatre’s most successful shows. 

Omar is currently developing projects with Manchester International Festival, National Theatre, Royal Court, Collective Malouba and The Shed in New York.

Theatre includes: 

As Director: The Chairs (Almeida); Misty (Bush Theatre/ West End); NASSIM (Bush Theatre/ Traverse Theatre/ World Tour); Going Through; Islands; You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy (Bush Theatre); The Return of Danton (Munchner Kammerspiele); The Mill: City of Dreams (Freedom Studios). 

As Associate Director: The Royale; Leave Taking; Perseverance Drive (Bush Theatre).

Lolita Chakrabarti OBE is an award-winning playwright and actress.

Her adaption of Yann Martel's Booker prize winning novel Life of Pi for the stage, premiered to 5-star reviews at the Sheffield Crucible in July 2019 and opened in London's West End in November 2021. It has been nominated for nine Olivier awards including Best New Play, won four UK Theatre Awards and the WhatsonStage award for Best New Play.

Lolita’s original play Hymn streamed live from The Almeida during the coronavirus pandemic in 2021 and opened to audiences in July that same year.

Her adaption of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities premiered at the Manchester International Festival before transferring to Brisbane Festival. This ambitious production was a collaboration between Rambert dance company, 59 Productions and Lolita.

In 2012 Lolita’s debut play Red Velvet premiered at the Tricycle Theatre in London. It returned to the Tricycle in 2014, before transferring to New York and the West End. Red Velvet was nominated for nine major awards including two Oliviers. Lolita won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright, The Critics Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright and the AWA Award for Arts and Culture.

She curated The Greatest Wealth at the Old Vic in 2018, commissioning eight monologues of which she wrote one, about the NHS on its 70th birthday, which was updated in 2020 to play online and reflect the pandemic, featuring a new monologue by Bernadine Evaristo starring Sharon D Clarke.

In 2020 Lolita was dramaturg on Message in a Bottle for ZooNation and Sadlers Wells and is dramaturg on ZooNations’ forthcoming Sylvia.

In 2020 Bloomsbury published Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti: A Working Diary which followed a year in their working lives.

Other writing credits The Goddess for Woman's Hour BBC Radio 4 and Last Seen Joy for the Almeida.

As an actress credits include Vigil (BBC1), Showtrial (BBC1), Wheel of Time (Amazon), To Provide All People (BBC2), Delicious (Sky One), Born to Kill (CH4), Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (ITV), Vera (ITV), Jekyll and Hyde (ITV), My Mad Fat Diary 3 (E4), Death in Paradise (BBC1), One Night (BBC1), The Smoke (Sky1), Outnumbered (BBC1), J K Rowling’s A Casual Vacancy (BBC1/HBO), Riviera (Sky Atlantic), Criminal (Netflix), Defending The Guilty (BBC), WPC Blake in The Bill (ITV), Fanny & Alexander (Old Vic), and Hamlet directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh (RADA).

Lolita also co-produced Of Mary, a short film directed by Adrian Lester, which won Best Short Film at PAFF, Los Angeles.

Phil Belfield has a BA in Drama & Theatre Studies from Middlesex University. He worked in a number of arts organisations including the NT, Lyric Hammersmith, Riverside Studios & Royal Court. He then helped set up the Stage Holding UK office and assisted Matthew Bourne at Adventures in Motion Pictures (now New Adventures) for 6 years before joining Cassie Mayer Ltd as a junior agent in 2000, and then as an agent for BBA from 2004.

London International Mime Festival (LIMF) is an established, annual festival of contemporary visual theatre. Essentially wordless and multi-disciplinary, its programme embraces circus-theatre, puppetry/animation, object theatre, mime, live art and physical theatre.

Founded in 1977 at the Cockpit Theatre as a one-off event to showcase the work of British mimes, theatre clowns and other physical and visual theatre artists, the festival rapidly grew in scale, quality and reputation. Since that start in one small theatre, LIMF has used more than thirty London venues – from Tate Modern, a private house and West End theatres, to the Royal Opera House, Almeida, Barbican, ICA, Sadler’s Wells and Southbank Centre. To date, the festival has presented over 800 productions over its 46-year history.

LIMF assists in the creation and presentation of excellent, innovative non text-based theatre that is new to London. Most shows are UK premieres. It works with young, up and coming artists as well as established companies. 

LIMF has an international reputation and is the UK’s longest established annual, international theatre festival. In recent years the festival’s productions and its two directors have received various honours and awards, most notably three Olivier Award nominations including winner of Best New Dance Production in 2015 (Peeping Tom’s 32 Rue Vandenbranden at The Barbican), a Total Theatre lifetime achievement award and most recently the 2017 Empty Space – Peter Brook Special Achievement Award.

Lisa is an actress, writer and theatre maker. She has worked regularly with Told By an Idiot performing in Shoot me in the heart, A little fantasy, Beauty and the beast and Too clever by half. She has also worked with Improbable on No idea and The hanging man. Other theatre work includes The National Theatre, Trestle, The RSC, Graeae and many other regional and international theatres and companies. She was a regular character in “Eastenders” (BBC) from 2014-2018 her other tv credits include Vera (ITV); Patricia (Sky Atlantic); One Night (BBC); Psychoville (BBC); Max and Paddy’s Road to nowhere (Ch4); Where the heart is (ITV). She has also featured in the BBC’s genealogy programme Who do you think you are?

Lisa has appeared in the following Told by an Idiot shows: Shoot Me In The Heart, A Little Fantasy, Beauty and the Beast and Too Clever By Half

Sophie Scott CBE is a British neuroscientist and Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London (UCL). Her research investigates the cognitive neuroscience of voices, speech and laughter, and she is very interested in how our the neural basis of human vocal communication. She was the 2017 Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer and she was awarded the Royal Society's Michael Faraday prize and lecture in 2021. Sophie is the Divisional Director for Equity Diversity and inclusion in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at UCL.

The documentary mentioned in this episode is here. 

Jos Houben is internationally acclaimed as a leader in the field of Comedy and Physical Theatre.

Performing, writing, teaching, and directing world-wide for the past 30 years he has worked with leading international organisations and artists including: Peter Brook, Ecole Jacques Lecoq, The Right Size, Georges Aperghis, Theatre de Complicite- Simon McBurney, National Theatre London, Ragdoll Ltd, Thames TV, Opera North, Centre National Des Arts Du Cirque, British Council and Opéra Comique.

He has received the prestigious Perrier Comedy Award (1986, Theatre de Complicite) and Olivier Award for Best Entertainment (1999, The Right Size). 

Houben’s one man show The Art of Laughter has been touring the word for the past 12 years. He has played month long stints to sell out audiences at the prestigious Rond Point Theater on the Champs Elysees three years in a row. The show is such a success that Jos was featured on the front page of France’s Le Monde and interviewed on national news channels. 

In 2016 Jos did comedy directing for the hit West End musical Girls and toured extensively with the comedy duo Marcel. 

He directed Czech Physical Theatre Company Squadra Sua’s new hit show Crossings which opened to wide acclaim in Prague in May 2019.

He is currently preparing two Operas for the Opéra Rennes and Opera Caen as well as a new movement based show with contemporary dancer Raphaelle Delaunay. 

Jason Barnett biog:

Theatre includes: 

THE VISIT (National Theatre), INSTRUCTIONS FOR CORRECT ASSEMBLY, THE VICTORIAN IN THE WALL, FRIDAY NIGHT SEX, PRIMETIME, THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE (all Royal Court Theatre), SAINT GEORGE & THE DRAGON, EMIL & THE DETECTIVES, WAR HORSE, AMATO SALTONE (all National Theatre), LIFE OF GALILEO (Young Vic), ABOUT A BOY (Young Vic and tour), MOGADISHU (Manchester Royal Exchange), THE WINTER’S TALE, PERICLES, DAYS OF SIGNIFICANCE (all RSC),  THE FIXER (Almeida Theatre), CRUISIN’ (The Bush) , JOHN DRYDEN’S TEMPEST (Shakespeare’s Globe). 

Television includes: 

BRIDGERTON, AGATHA RAISIN (Series 1-4), LEE & DEAN, HAILMAKERS, PORRIDGE, BLISS, JONATHAN CREEK, JOSH, DEATH IN PARADISE , THE JAVONE PRINCE SHOW, PHONESHOP, BAD EDUCATION, STAGE DOOR JOHNNIES, HOTEL TRUBBLE, THE BILL, EXTRAS, COMING OF AGE, DEAD RINGERS, DREAM TEAM and LITTLE BRITAIN 

Film includes: 

LONDON ROAD, CINDERELLA, SUPERBOB, ONE MAN AND HIS DOG, THE SIGHT