Welcome to The Big Smoke Variety Show!

This week, we throw open the doors to Variety Week and journey from the secrets hiding behind London’s blue plaques to an ancient tale of love, fate and devotion from the forests of India.

First, comedian and blue plaque tour guide Kate Sharp returns with another stop on her delightfully unhinged walking tour of London. This time, Kate leads us to Dollis Hill and the former Post Office Research Station, where we uncover the story of Tommy Flowers, the unsung inventor behind Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer.

While Alan Turing may have had the film, the fame and the Benedict Cumberbatch treatment, Tommy Flowers’ achievements stayed top secret for decades. Kate tells the story of the man whose work at Bletchley Park helped decipher encrypted German messages during the Second World War, with historians estimating that the intelligence produced there may have shortened the war by two years and saved millions of lives.

Naturally, this being Kate’s Blue Plaque Tour, there are also pigeons, theatrical diversions, a deeply questionable Edinburgh Fringe plug, and a new song from her show that Tommy Flowers may or may not have wanted to hear from the front row…

Then, in Stories You Haven’t Heard, actor, writer and storyteller Scott Brooksbank transports us to ancient India for the story of Savitri and Satyavan, a remarkable tale from the Mahabharata.

Scott takes us into the forest for a story of prophecy, devotion and impossible resolve, as Savitri chooses Satyavan as her husband despite being warned that he is destined to die exactly one year later. When that day arrives, and Yama, the god of death, comes to claim Satyavan’s soul, Savitri follows him, using wisdom, patience and astonishing courage to outwit death itself.

It is a story about love in the face of fate, the choices we make when time is limited, and the extraordinary power of staying beside the person you cannot imagine living without.

We’re also trying something new, with episodes now coming to you every single week. So stay tuned next Thursday for more adventurous audio from across The Big Smoke.

So whether you’re following a chaotic blue plaque tour, or walking through an ancient forest in pursuit of death itself, remember: there are remarkable stories hiding everywhere, if we take the time to listen — and we’ll keep uncovering them together here in The Big Smoke.

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Links

🔵 Tommy Flowers’ Blue Plaque

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Chapters

(00:00) Intro & Show Menu

(02:02) Blue Plaque Walking Tour: Tommy Flowers

(08:28) Stories You Haven’t Heard: Savitri and Satyavan

(24:45) Outro

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Credits

Hosted & Executive Produced by Kevin Bennett

Produced & Edited by Alex Graham

Original Music by Giles Terera

Music arranged and played by Joseph Atkins

Blue Plaque Walking Tour written and performed by Kate Sharp

Stories You Haven’t Heard written and performed by Scott Brooksbank

Welcome to The Big Smoke Variety Show!

This week, we brave the sting and fly into the surprisingly fascinating world of wasps — from Shakespeare and Aristotle to cockroach hunters, paper architects, picnic pests. We explore some of nature’s most misunderstood creatures.

Kevin is joined by Seirian Sumner, Professor of Behavioural Ecology at University College London and author of Endless Forms: Why We Should Love Wasps. Seirian has published more than 80 scientific papers, received numerous awards for her research, and is co-founder of the citizen science initiative The Big Wasp Survey.

Together, Kevin and Seirian explore the remarkable lives of wasps, and the myths, stories and misconceptions that have shaped our view of them for centuries. From Aristotle declaring there was “nothing divine” about them, to biblical hornets, Shakespearean insults, and the wonderfully ridiculous 1959 film The Wasp Woman, they look at why wasps have spent so long as the villains of the insect world.

But this conversation also reveals a very different side to them. Seirian explains how parasitoid wasps inspired Darwin’s doubts about creation, how emerald jewel wasps can effectively lead a cockroach to its underground tomb, and how bee wolves use antibiotics, waterproofing and even fungicidal gases to keep their prey safe for their young.

Along the way, we learn why most wasps are nothing like the yellowjackets that bother us at picnics, why the adults are essentially vegetarians, how a simple “wasp offering” might save your summer barbecue, and why these much-maligned insects may have an important role to play in pollination, pest control, medicine, sustainable farming and even future food systems.

Kevin and Seirian also travel beyond the usual Western view of wasps, exploring traditional wasp-keeping in Nagaland, India, where communities farm hornets and other wasps for food, drawing on generations of ecological knowledge and a far more tolerant relationship with these remarkable creatures.

We’re also trying something new, with episodes now coming to you every week. Join us next Thursday for the next stop on Kate Sharpe’s Blue Plaque Tour and a special tale from the Mahabharata told by Scott Brooksbank in Stories You Haven’t Heard.

So whether you’re guarding your picnic, watching a wasp at work in the garden, or wondering whether the insect world’s great villains might actually deserve a second chance, remember: every creature has a hidden story, and sometimes the thing we fear most is simply the thing we haven’t understood yet — just as we keep discovering here in The Big Smoke.

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Links

🐝 Seirian Sumner

📚 Endless Forms: Why We Should Love Wasps

🍖🍯 Get Involved and Learn More — Wasp Picnic Survey

🐝🔍 The Big Wasp Survey

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Chapters

(00:00) Intro & Show Menu

(01:37) Seirian Sumner Interview

(55:16) Outro

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Credits

Hosted & Executive Produced by Kevin Bennett

Produced & Edited by Alex Graham

Original Music by Giles Terera

Music arranged and played by Joseph Atkins

Welcome to The Big Smoke Variety Show!

This week, we throw open the doors to Variety Week and descend into the wonderfully strange — from apprentice magicians wrestling with the laws of reality to historic London loos wrestling with the laws of plumbing.

First, fan-favourite trainee magicians The Strange Brothers return from the Xander Eldrick Institute of Illusion, Divination and, of course, Dance. This time, Salazar Strange and Craig attempt one of magic’s most iconic feats: sawing a man in half. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Then, once the blood has been mopped up and the Wi-Fi re-connected, we head back out into London with Rachel Cole-Wilkin of London Loo Tours.

This week, Rachel takes us beneath Covent Garden to explore one of the capital’s most atmospheric public conveniences. Tucked beneath the west side of St Paul’s Church, these underground loos come complete with iron gates, turnstiles, fading grandeur, old-fashioned scales, 1960s byelaws, and a rich aroma that leaves little doubt about what lies below.

We’re also trying something new, with episodes now coming to you every single week. So stay tuned next Thursday for more adventurous audio from across The Big Smoke.

So whether you’re attempting impossible magic or simply looking for somewhere to spend a penny, remember: there’s always something unexpected waiting beneath the surface — and we’ll keep finding it together here in The Big Smoke.

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Links

🚻 London Loo Tours

🍸 Cellar Door

🍷 WC Bars

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Chapters

(00:00) Intro & Show Menu

(01:55) Strange Brothers

(13:13) London Loo Tours

(22:43) Outro

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Credits

Hosted & Executive Produced by Kevin Bennett

Produced & Edited by Alex Graham

Original Music by Giles Terera

Music arranged and played by Joseph Atkins

The Strange Brothers written and performed by Jamie Sandersfield and Matthew Nicholson