Yesterday’s radio seemed to go off OK. Here’s the traditional round-up post.

We began with a live interview with the fabulous Tamsin Clarke of the Popelei Theatre Company. Much of the conversation was about Manuelita, the one-woman play based on the life of the South American revolutionary leader, Manuela Saenz. We also talked about theatre more generally, and about other projects that Tamsin is currently involved in. If you are in Bristol on Saturday evening and you don’t have a ticket for Against Me! then you can catch Tamsin and friends in Carved, a Christmas dinner of absurd anarchical performance and cabaret for the sinful and undeserving, at The Cube.

Next up was an interview with David M Barnett about his forthcoming novel, Calling Major Tom. David and I recorded this at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature back in October, but there was no point airing it until now as the book isn’t out until January (and then only as an ebook). Obviously I had to play Amanda Palmer’s version of “Space Oddity”. Not only is there the Bowie connection, but David’s editor, Sam Eades, used to be Neil Gaiman’s UK publicist.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

The second hour began with the interview I did with Sarah Pinborough at BristolCon. I think this is the first interview I have done that involved two large glasses of Merlot. Sarah is great fun to interview. She has a great story to tell too. Thanks are due to Gareth Powell because I based a bunch of the questions on Sarah’s Guest of Honor interview, which Gareth conducted.

Finally on the show we had my report on the Women’s Equality Party conference. That includes a whole lot of comments from people who were at the conference, including Stella Duffy, Catherine Mayer and Sophie Walker. I was joined in the studio by my colleagues on the show, Frances and Judeline, and was pleased to see that they liked what WEP was doing.

You can listen to the second half of the show here.

The full playlist for the show was as follows:

• Edwin Starr – War
• Cat Stevens – Peace Train
• Otis Redding – Try a Little Tenderness
• Amanda Palmer & Jherek Bischoff – Space Oddity
• Martha Reeves & the Vandellas – Nowhere to Run
• Diana Ross & the Supremes – Reflections
• The Temptations – Ball of Confusion
• Sly and the Family Stone – I Want to Take Your Hand

Amanda aside, all of those tracks were taken from the soundtrack album of the V&A’s new 1960s exhibition which I reviewed here.