Comedian and TV star Romesh Ranganathan makes career admission
Comedian Romesh Ranganathan, 47, revealed on BBC Radio 4 's Desert Island Discs that he is 'taking a step back' from his career to spend more time at home, though he clarified this is not a retirement announcement.
Ranganathan emphasised that he has no specific career strategy or 'end game,' and is currently 'just doing whatever feels good.'
He mentioned he intends to be more measured in his work going forward, potentially taking longer breaks between projects to experience life outside of comedy.
Reflecting on his previous career as a maths teacher, Ranganathan stated that it was more stressful than his current work in comedy, despite feeling fulfilled in the role.
Besides his stand-up career, Ranganathan is known for presenting The Weakest Link, starring in the sitcom Avoidance, and hosting shows on BBC Radio 2, including Romesh Ranganathan: For The Love Of Hip Hop.
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BBC News
31 minutes ago
- BBC News
Hull's banana history featured in exhibition
These days, Humber Street in Hull is lined with coffee shops, galleries and bars, as the area continues to evolve into a leisure destination following a plan to regenerate the area in from the 16th Century, the cobbled street was home to a vibrant market and, after World War Two, it was thought to be the third largest fruit market in the UK, importing produce from all over the an interactive exhibition, called Bananarchy at Humber Street Gallery, hopes to highlight the area's rich history, as well as giving visitors a reason to smile. On the first floor, the exhibition features a maze made up of 1,560 banana boxes which artist Pippa Hale, 53, said was a nod to the purpose of the building in the 1950s. "This used to be a banana ripening room", she said. "It belonged to TJ Pupparts and was built on a bombed out site around 1956." Downstairs, you can dress up in a variety of banana-based Hale said: "They're all connected to nicknames that people in the trade used to go by. If you didn't have a nickname, you were no one."She said the street echoed to the sound of shouting and barrows. People would have spats but they all ended each day as friends again. Pamela Howes' father, George Noble, used to work in the building opposite at 14-15 Humber Street, part of which is now home to Mousey Brown's hair salon. Ms Howes, 70, said she loved coming down to the street on a Saturday as a five-year-old. "We got given apples and melons by all the traders and we used to feed all the cats - although we shouldn't have done because they were all wild," she Howes said Mr Noble started on the street as a barrow boy, knocking on every door until he finally got a job in 1931 at AW Kirebye's, owned by a Danish company. She said: "Eventually he became junior salesman then managing director, before the company was sold to Fyffes."She said the street was full of "nice memories"."We'd go round the other side of the building and watch the bananas come down. "And, on about three occasions, my dad found tarantulas in the bananas. Then you had to call up a person who would come and take them Hale added: "What I like about this street now is that so much has been preserved and restored."The exhibition runs until Sunday 21 September. Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
Telegraph
33 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Steve Rider interview: Gary Lineker's downfall was inevitable
Quietly, gracefully, the curtain is falling on one of the consummate broadcasting careers. Steve Rider, known to millions for his balance of levity and gravity, for deftly handling everything from Peter Alliss' quips at Augusta to Ayrton Senna's death at Imola, is on Sunday afternoon hanging up the microphone for good, signing off on ITV4 from his beloved British Touring Car Championship at Oulton Park. True to form, he anticipates less a lachrymose farewell than a few understated words that will come to him in the moment. 'God knows, I'll be very disappointed if Andrea Bocelli isn't here,' he chuckles. 'I'll go quietly, don't worry.' It is striking to see the profound affection that Rider draws at the Cheshire track as retirement beckons. Fans line up in the pit lane for autographs and selfies with him, nostalgic on learning they will no longer be treated to perhaps the smoothest voice in British sport. Rider represents a link to a halcyon age on our screens, a time when Grandstand would dominate Saturday afternoons and when the BBC could still claim a live portfolio encompassing the Masters, the Open and Formula One. At 75, he is, in the words of his former ITV colleague James Allen, 'one of the greatest professionals – low-ego, dedicated, supremely competent, always calm'. Rider's gift is that he has always seemed to know not just what to say, but when and how to say it. The story of one indelible April weekend in 1994 encapsulates this better than any. On the Saturday he was at Wembley, anchoring rugby league's Challenge Cup final, when the BBC received a call from Simtek, a fledgling F1 team, asking for confirmation that Rider – whom they knew as a motorsport aficionado – would be travelling overnight to the San Marino Grand Prix. 'They had a suspension part they needed to get to Imola, and they wanted me to carry it by hand,' he reflects. 'So, this thing ended up propped up against the back of our studio. About an hour later, we learned Roland Ratzenberger, one of their drivers, had been killed in qualifying.' The Austrian's death marked the first in F1 for 12 years, a harbinger of the horror to come. Just 24 hours later Rider was pitched into the most gruelling live broadcast of his 48 years in television, learning almost immediately that Senna's 190mph crash at Tamburello corner was fatal but forced to hold the programme together for several hours until the hospital's official confirmation. 'In '94, you were effectively the only source of information,' he says. 'People's mobile phones weren't going to be lighting up. So it was down to you to set the tone for how this awful news was delivered. 'On site at Imola, there was a policy to say, 'This is an ongoing situation'. We had our own BBC camera there, so we could cut away from the worst of the footage that Italian TV was providing. It was the start of the World Championship Snooker final, so I was standing on the pit wall with all this going on, cutting in and out of frames of snooker. But thank goodness for that. It was tough.' Mercifully, there are settings harbouring happier memories: not least Augusta, where, as the BBC's master of ceremonies for 23 years, he had a front-row seat for both an unprecedented era of European dominance and the eccentricities of the inimitable Alliss. 'It was the perennial, unchanging nature of the place,' he explains. 'Peter kept a bottle of whiskey in the bottom of his wardrobe and came back to it every year. He would leave his clothes there, too. We would just pick up where we left off.' Not that his introduction to the tournament was quite so auspicious. In 1982, covering his first Masters remotely for ITV, Rider suffered the misfortune of a technical malfunction at the critical moment. 'It was my first big individual network commitment, and we had a warning that maybe the satellite booking would be a bit vulnerable around midnight,' he says. 'The line went down – and it never came back. We had no communication with Augusta in any form. The worst part was that Craig Stadler and Dan Pohl were on the 18th, heading for a play-off, and we came off air without anyone knowing the result.' Ian Wooldridge wrote at the time that ITV should never be entrusted with a major sporting event again. Rider still has the article framed at home. When eventually he returned to ITV in 2005, Rider was unimpressed by the BBC's decision to replace him as its face of golf with Gary Lineker. It was hardly his style, of course, to engage in a public slanging match. His true feelings only became clear a decade later, when, riled by his successor's depiction of the R&A as pompous and superior, he said: 'Most other observers knew that Gary was the wrong man in the wrong job.' They have not spoken since, with Rider offering an arched eyebrow on Lineker's tendency to stray far beyond his brief as a football presenter, arguing that he 'blundered' into politics. On Lineker's dramatic BBC downfall last month, with the corporation easing him out of the door after his sharing of an anti-Semitic rat emoji, Rider is unequivocal. 'To put forward his opinions so energetically, you need to step outside the framework of the BBC,' he says. 'That message was never convincingly conveyed to him by the BBC, and that's where they are at fault. He needed people looking after him before he pressed the button on some fairly volatile retweets. He needed to be saved from himself. So, there was a kind of inevitability about it.' It was Roger Mosey, the BBC's former director of sport, who elevated Lineker to a level of power and remuneration far beyond that of any other presenter. You sense there is not much love lost here either: it was Mosey, after all, who pulled the plug on Grandstand in 2007 – without, Rider suggests, 'any great thought about the shape of what should come next'. While a BBC stalwart for two decades, Rider laments what has happened to some of the programmes he would so unflappably host. Take Sports Personality of the Year. The combination of Rider's urbanity and Des Lynam's sardonic wit helped elevate a mere awards shindig at Television Centre to the status of a cherished Christmas staple. Today, shunted from Sunday night primetime to midweek, it is an inelegant, achingly worthy highlights package. 'The commercial aspect took over,' Rider says. 'The thinking was, 'Let's take it to a 5,000-seat arena with a big shiny floor'' It killed the chemistry. Unfortunately, this happened just as the BBC's involvement in sport started declining. Now it's very, very uncomfortable to see. It's not the type of programme you would invent now. It has become a bit of a ball and chain.' Given Rider's contribution, alongside Murray Walker, to glamorising a great chapter in F1 history, it seemed faintly tragicomic for the BBC to reduce the SPOTY segment on Max Verstappen's 2023 title-winning season to a fan video of the Dutchman rounding the final corner at Silverstone. One of Rider's abiding passions today is to bring motorsport's heritage alive for a modern audience, curating material from the first 30 years of the F1 world championship. It is in this capacity that he has realised the national broadcaster is missing a trick. 'The BBC has the biggest race archive, the biggest volume of F1 material of anyone,' he says. 'But it shows a complete reluctance to access it, to activate it, or even to monetise it. Six months ago, an F1 stills archive changed hands for £21 million. The BBC is sitting on an absolute treasure trove – the public access argument is overwhelming.' Across almost half a century in front of the cameras, Rider has witnessed almost inconceivable change. When he covered his first Olympics in Moscow in 1980, much of the filming would be done on two-inch tape, which had to be cut with razor blades. By the time he reached Sydney 20 years later, vast TV crews could capture every facet of the Games in the tiniest detail. But the presentation still required Rider's unerring eye for a human story. Never did this prove more valuable than when he told his team to mobilise for Steve Redgrave's tilt at a fifth gold medal. 'My family and I live out near Marlow, Steve's hometown, so we knew him pretty well,' he says. 'But in Sydney, the Penrith Lakes were a fair distance away, and there was a reluctance within the BBC to commit resources. But I told people, 'This is the biggest story of the Games and the biggest story of the year, potentially'. We got into a car with a crew at 4am and I've never known anything like it – it was like heading to a campfire, with Union flags flying out of every car. 'By 7am, 12,000 people were at the lake. When Steve won gold, he initially shrugged, 'Oh, it's just another race'. We only had about 45 seconds left, and I was trying to salvage things. So I told Matthew Pinsent, 'Just explain to Steve exactly what he has achieved'. And he said, 'Well, you've just become the greatest Olympian of all time'. He chose his words beautifully. The camera went in on Steve, the tears welled up, and you came away thinking you had played a little part in a golden moment.' He counts it, to this day, as his career's crowning glory. It is Rider's mixture of sharpness and sensitivity that will be most keenly missed when he makes his farewell. It is rare, in an often backbiting industry, where nobody has a bad word to say about you, but he appears to have managed it. The ultimate man for all seasons, as enthusiastic in talking about touring cars as about the Boat Race, he conveyed everything with a voice of the purest silk. Asked what his final thought on air will be, he says: 'It will be about the help and the friendship that I've had.' He upholds, to the very end, that precious art of never making it about himself.
The Sun
33 minutes ago
- The Sun
Shoppers just realising ‘favourite ever' 80s sweet has been AXED leaving them gutted
SHOPPERS are just realising their "favourite ever" 80s sweet has been axed - and they're gutted. The sought-after Wonka Everlasting Gobstoppers, dubbed Heartbreakers, are no longer in stock across stores in the UK. The white, pink, and red heart-shaped treats changed in colour and flavour with each layer, making them a hit among sweet lovers. Originally imported from the US, these 340g 80s sweets scanned at tills for £3.50. However, some shoppers are only now discovering that the popular sweet treat has been discontinued. One user took to Reddit, writing: "I just learned this has been discontinued, correct me if I'm wrong. ps what's a good replacement?" The post attracted several comments from disappointed shoppers who were also unaware that the popular treat had been axed. This shopper wrote: "I was obsessed with these like 4 years ago. Why would they discontinue them?" "The spree hearts were my favourite ever," added another. A third said: "I keep hoping they'll bring them back." "I just found out the bad news too! I'm devastated," a fourth added. It comes after M&S confirmed it had axed a beloved snack - particularly popular with a pint. 6 ways to get the biggest bargains in B&M It came after a disgruntled shopper took to social media to inquire about its whereabouts. They said on X: "@Marksandspencer have you stopped selling the Sweet Chilli Combo Mix snack? "Been to several stores today and no sign of them. Please say they've not been discontinued!!" The Sweet Chilli Combo Mix was a selection of crispy potato and corn snacks - which came in the shape of tubes, wheels and flat crisps. Fans deemed them the perfect sweet and spicy morsel to enjoy alongside a cold drink. But their worst fears were confirmed when M&S employee Simon weighed in on the thread. He said: "It looks like we have discontinued this flavour, sorry about that." It follows Nestle confirming they pulled a new type of Rowntree's sweets just one year after launch. And B&M fans are in a frenzy after spying retro sweets back on shelves. Why are products axed or recipes changed? ANALYSIS by chief consumer reporter James Flanders. Food and drinks makers have been known to tweak their recipes or axe items altogether. They often say that this is down to the changing tastes of customers. There are several reasons why this could be done. For example, government regulation, like the "sugar tax," forces firms to change their recipes. Some manufacturers might choose to tweak ingredients to cut costs. They may opt for a cheaper alternative, especially when costs are rising to keep prices stable. For example, Tango Cherry disappeared from shelves in 2018. It has recently returned after six years away but as a sugar-free version. Fanta removed sweetener from its sugar-free alternative earlier this year. Suntory tweaked the flavour of its flagship Lucozade Original and Orange energy drinks. While the amount of sugar in every bottle remains unchanged, the supplier swapped out the sweetener aspartame for sucralose.
