Yesterday’s radio was a bit manic as we had a number of guests scheduled to come in, some of whom might not be able to make it. Thankfully my guests are always well behaved, and the first half hour of the show was devoted to me quizzing Jo Hall about her great new fantasy novel, The Art of Forgetting: Rider. I’m delighted at the way Jo has busily subverted several of the common tropes of epic fantasy. Good QUILTBAG content too. Must write a review. And if you are local and are not coming to the launch event tonight I want to know why.

The next segment was the “lighter look at life” thing, in which we finally managed to make ourselves laugh. Then again, we were talking about pet hates. If you want to know what some of mine are, do listen in.

Finally in the first hour, with guests missing, I bullied the team into letting me talk about Wendy Davis and Julia Gillard. We might be local radio, but we do care about what happens elsewhere in the world. That’s especially true when the only news that gets out comes via another local news service: well done Texas Tribune.

You can listen to the whole of the first hour as a podcast here.

I was thinking I was all done by 13:00, but Paulette ambushed me with another interview. Still minus guests, we dragged in one of the Ujima staff, Caroline Oldland, to talk about the work she does devising youth projects for the station. It turned out to be a great interview and I’m really pleased to have got to talk to Caroline.

The second hour of the show is podcast here. I’m done after the interview with Caroline. The rest of the show is about local politics, but still worth a listen if you want to hear local people standing up to austerity culture.

Update: Fixed spelling of Wendy’s name. Sorry.