Tony Parsons

Published: May 30, 2015, 10:54 a.m.

The journalist and novelist, Tony Parsons, joins Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir. Tony was working on the night shift at Gordon's Gin Distillery when he was offered his first job as a journalist on the New Musical Express. When he wasn't hanging out with rock stars he was embedded with the Vice Squad at 27 Savile Row, West End Central, where the roots of his crime character, DC Max Wolfe, first began. Saturday Live listener, Hilary Nicoll, talks about The Museum of Dad. Featuring a music case, a trombone, old jazz 78s, and a chair made of steel tube and leather, it's a blog in remembrance of her architect father, who is now living in a nursing home with Alzheimer's. Ex-Blue Peter presenter, Janet Ellis, has long been fascinated by the lives of people who were here before us, so much so that she has developed a life-long passion for looking around graveyards. She visits the cemetery at St Nicholas' Church in Chiswick, with Dan Parker. Janet describes Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas, as a possible epitaph. Sarah Woods describes her travels to Central and South America in an eight year quest to see the Harpy Eagle in the wild. She explains why helping a teenage girl in labour, and seeing the Harpy Eagle up close, were life-changing experiences. Jonathan Moore is an ex-punk who became an opera director. Art and spirituality are his vocation - as shown in his current play about Ignatius of Loyola. And the Inheritance Tracks of Dom Joly. He chooses America by Simon and Garfunkel and In a Room by The House of Love. The Slaughter Man by Tony Parsons is published by Century. On a Wing and a Prayer, by Sarah Woods, is published by Bloomsbury. Janet Ellis' first novel, The Butcher's Hook, is scheduled for publication in February 2016. Inigo, written and directed by Jonathan Moore, runs at the Pleasance in north London until 13 June, 2015. The exhibition Peter Wilkins - Great British Music from the 1960s - 2010s, is at Dray Walk Gallery, London E1 6QL until 1 June, 2015.