BBC - Free but Ticketed

I spent quite a lot of time at the Festival site on Friday, looking round the stalls, browsing the Oxfam bookshop, and sitting in the BBC Tent. I also came across a few people from HOWLS, with collecting buckets to support the Library.

Here's a signboard with a quote from Greta Thunberg. By the late afternoon it was covered with comments from Festival goers, supporting her.

Audiences for BBC programmes have to book a free ticket to get in, and my choices were Free Thinking for Radio 3 and Front Row Late.
It was fascinating to see the differences between the radio show and the TV show. There was a "warm up man", dressed in striped tshirt and beret, who made the point that silent appreciation didn't really work on radio - so if we wanted to react to something, it would be good if it were audible. For the TV show, he said that silent smiling and nodding was also fine, because there was a camera trained on the audience.
The radio show also had big microphones in front of each speaker, with the presenter wearing headphones, while the TV show had leather chairs and invisible mics which had to be adjusted by the sound man before they started, while Mary Beard chatted to the audience.
Free Thinking is chaired by Rana Mitter, a presenter I'd not come across before, and he did a very good job of involving all the members of the panel in a discussion of Silent Spring, the environmental book by Rachel Carson which was published in 1962 (to predictable cries of "Who does this woman think she is?" by the vested interests she was criticising). Tony Juniper, now chair of Natural England, said it was the first book that was recognisable as a modern environmental work, and it blended science and personal testimonies with lyrical nature writing.
The other members of the panel were Dieter Helm, an economist, Emily Shuckburgh, a climate scientist, and Kapka Kassabova, another climate scientist who grew up on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain. This programme will be broadcast on Wednesday 29th May at 10pm, and is available as a BBC Arts & Ideas podcast.

Front Row Live was being filmed to be shown later, at 11pm that evening, but as if it was live, and included film clips of interviews done previously on the various topics that were covered. Simon Schama was one of the panel, and one of the topics was a new exhibition at the Jewish Museum in London about Jewish stereotypes. It includes an early work by Rembrandt, and as Simon Schama is an expert on Rembrandt Mary Beard, the chair of the discussion, got him to wax lyrical about the painting.
They also talked about changes in comedy shows over the years, and about what was offensive. This included clips from Fleabag and Alf Garnett, and it was noted that the audience was laughing at the jokes in the modern comedy, but not at the Alf Garnett clip, where he was being racist while extremely drunk.

There was enough of a gap between the two events for me to walk back down the Brecon Road to one of the stalls set out in a front garden. This was Pip's Cider Bar. The bar itself was in a horsebox, with straw bales set out around the garden to sit on.

I treated myself to a cider cocktail, Festival Fancy, which was cider, apple juice and elderflower over ice.