Another foray into Gyles's schoolboy diaries today, and this time it's the second half of 1961. In this chapter we find out what happens when Gyles starts at his new secondary school, Bedales, a pioneering liberal arts boarding school near Petersfield in Hampshire. How will Gyles cope with the ardous programme of 'outdoor work' which is part of his new timetable? Will he get a girlfriend? What will his new teachers make of him? Gyles and Harriet discuss all this and more... and they uncover the identity of a mysterious coat which has been at Gyles's house for over twenty years. Enjoy this.

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This week Boris Johnson is on the Rosebud couch, and Gyles tries to get him off the usual political topics and instead talking about where it all began. We find out about Boris's early years, spent fighting with his siblings and playing violent physical games in school playgrounds. We find out about his schooldays, his first crush and his parents' divorce. We also hear about what he got up to on his first night at No. 10, and about his deep admiration for the late Queen. This is Boris - as you've never heard him before.

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Today's Rosebud is an enormously entertaining talk given by Gyles at the Henley Literary Festival. Ostensibly about Gyles's books - Prose and Cons, a History of the English Language in Just a Minute, and Breaking the Code: Gyles's diaries from his days as an MP - this talk is actually much more than that. In true Gyles style, it is full of amazing anecdotes, beginning with some brilliant stories about Dame Maggie Smith, who died the day before this talk was given. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this fun hour with the master raconteur.

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Sir Matthew Bourne's reimaginings of classic works like Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Carmen have become legendary, and have transformed our ideas of what dance, and what theatre, are capable of. In this in-depth conversation, Gyles finds out about Sir Matthew's origin story, from his childhood days putting on shows for the neighbours on his street, to his teenage years, spent autograph-hunting in London's West End with his best friend, Simon. Matthew also talks about his circuitous route to dance school and we find out about the current tour of Matthew's famous Swan Lake.

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is at The Lowry, Salford from 19 November until 30 November, ahead of the 8-week annual Christmas season at Sadler’s Wells from 3 December 2024 to 26 January 2025. It then goes on a UK tour for Spring 2025.

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Another treat for you today, as Gyles carries on reading from his childhood diaries and discusses things with Harriet. In this chapter we join Gyles as he prepares to leave his prep school, Betteshanger, in Kent. Gyles performs in Twelfth Night, strikes up a friendship with the man who works the school boiler, becomes a prefect and spends his easter holidays being a waiter in a hotel in Bournemouth. Quite a busy schedule for someone who is only just 13!

We hope you enjoy these diary episodes - we're getting a lot of great feedback - so I think you are! We're planning to carry on with the diary, in chronological order, on Tuesdays.

If you'd like to write to us, please email [email protected]. We love hearing from you. And please remember to subscribe and to leave us a review on your podcast app, as that helps new listeners to find us. And keep on recommending us to any friends you think would also benefit from a bit of Rosebud in their life.

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This week we welcome the singers Michael Ball and Alfie Boe. Ball and Boe have been singing together for ten years, and are about to release their sixth album, but in this conversation Gyles takes them right back to the beginning. We hear about Alfie's childhood, growing up as the youngest in a family of nine in a council house in the north-west, about how he was discovered as he sang to himself at work as a mechanic, about his first girlfriend and the death of his father. Michael tells Gyles about his unhappy school days, his wild years at drama school in Guildford and the amazing first night of Les Mis at The Barbican. This is a warm, funny and sometimes touching conversation with two great musicians.

'Together at Home', Michael and Alfie's new album, is out now. Their UK arena tour is in March and April 2025, with a date at the O2 on April 13th 2025. Tickets are on sale now at livenation.co.uk.

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Today on More Rosebud Gyles talks to the American actress, singer-songwriter and star of Downton Abbey Elizabeth McGovern. In this conversation they talk about Elizabeth's childhood in a Bohemian and bookish household - first in Illinois and then in Los Angeles. They talk about the formative friendship of her adolescence. They talk about her sudden rise to fame: she was discovered as a teenager and cast in Robert Redford's Oscar-winning debut, Ordinary People; and they talk about the effect of fame on a young person. Gyles and Elizabeth also discuss how she met and married her British film-director husband, Simon Curtis, moved to London and started a family. And they talk about Downton, Elizabeth's music... and much more besides. Thank you, Elizabeth, for this fascinating conversation.

Listeners who’d like to book tickets to Harriet’s choir’s Christmas concert on 6 December can do it at www.voxcetera.co.uk.

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This week we welcome the restaurateur, entrepreneur, cook, writer and judge of Great British Bake Off Prue Leith onto Rosebud. Prue tells Gyles about her childhood, growing up under apartheid in South Africa; she reveals how she joined the boy scouts, became president of the tree-climbing club, and confronted the headmistress at her religious school with a shocking revelation. She and Gyles talk about her year in Paris learning French, the lightbulb moment in which she discovered her love of food, and the early years of setting up her first restaurant in London. This is a fascinating conversation about a fascinating, and boldly lived, life. Prue's book 'Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom' is out now, published by Quarto, and is a great Christmas present. Thank you to Prue for this wonderful interview.

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Exciting news: it's time for the next instalment of Gyles's schoolboy diaries. In this episode, the young GB goes on his holidays, to Germany and then, unaccompanied, to Paris. We also hear about his attempts to smuggle a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover into his boarding school. P.S Harriet got a bit of ahead of herself and released this on a Monday instead of a Tuesday by mistake! Enjoy it a day early, your special Rosebud bonus.

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Alan Titchmarsh has been gardening since he was a child, and in this special episode of Rosebud (recorded live in Salisbury in aid of Arundells, the former home of Sir Edward Heath) he tells Gyles about how he grew his first flowers from a packet of seeds bought at Woolworths. Alan also talks about leaving school at 15, his first kiss and the only lie he ever told. The episode ends with a treat: Alan reads one of his poems to Gyles and the audience. Alan Titchmarsh is one of our best-loved broadcasters, and this is a wonderful conversation. Enjoy this.

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