103. Lemn Sissay MBE; Lancashire Care Homes, Life’s Language of Travel and How Poetry Gave Him Wings
Release Date: 08/19/2020
125. Christmas Special 2021; Sathnam Sanghera, Lisa Jewell, Matt Forde, Anne Sebba, Olly Mann, Greenham Common and more
The Big Travel Podcast
Authors Anne Sebba on the Royal abdication, Sathnam Sanghera's dismal Christmas restaurant, Lisa Jewell's Boney M in Barbados, adventurer Jamie Douglas-Hamilton rowing to the Antarctic, satirist Matt Forde in an NYC Irish bar, podcaster Olly Mann’s disappointing LA Santa, artist Firouz FarmanFarmaian Muslim Catholic Christmas in Marrakesh, adventurer Sam McManus's ancient Spanish fiesta, Festival promoter Huw Win's Thai rainforest & Nobel Peace Prize winner Rebecca Johnson's Christmas at Greenham Common.
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124. Firouz FarmanFarmaian; Escaping Tehran, Kashmiri Houseboats, Trekking Kyrgyzstan, Rock Bands and Contemporary Art
The Big Travel Podcast
Born in Tehran, the descendent of a nomadic tribe, Contemporary Artist Firouz FarmanFarmaian's family scattered after the Islamic Revolution. He grew up trekking mountains and deserts, touring with his Indie rock band and now with his internationally acclaimed art. With a gallery in Tarifa, Spain, and a new base in Athens, he travels the globe sourcing ideas and materials with craftswomen in remote regions and will be representing Kyrgyzstan at the Venice Biennale with the exhibition Gates of Turan.
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123. On Location in Marbella Old Town with Tour Guide Javier Gonzalez
The Big Travel Podcast
A journey through the maze of Marbella's 16th Century cobbled lanes surrounding the old 'Orange Square', encountering flamenco singers and opera stars and sampling some of the coast's most wonderful tapas. With tour guide Javier Gonzalez and staying at the stunning Anantara Villa Padierna Palace, with its classical Italian design and sophisticated yet arty vibe.
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122. Matt Forde; Billy Connolly in New York, Liam Gallagher in Berlin and Nick Leeson's Worldwide 'British Scandal' Jaunt
The Big Travel Podcast
Comedian, political satirist and Spitting Image star Matt Forde talks accosting Billy Connolly in New York, 'dying' on stage in Luxemborg, pints of Carling in ex-pat clubs in Bahrain, Nick Leeson's luxury hotel dash around the world, spending 3 months locked in a first floor flat, an emotional pilgrimage to the Ghostbusters fire station, being the voice of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump (yes he does give us some excellent impressions) and posh people behaving badly on the podcast British Scandal.
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121. Sam McManus; Adventure Travel When the World Closes, Costa Rica, Green Northern Spain and the Unexpected Pull of Home
The Big Travel Podcast
Just as the world was closing Sam McManus from YellowWood Adventures took a daunting gamble and hopped on a plane to Costa Rica. We talk about how the pandemic can change travel (even for the better), tourism being potentially a means for good, eco-tourism and re-forestation, surfing, small pueblos in the green hills of Northern Spain, his wonderful travelogue about his explorations - Wax and Gold Journeys in Ethiopia & Other Roads Less Travelled - and feeling the pull of friends, family and home.
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120. UK TRAVEL UPDATE; Travel Opens Up, Vaccines, Quarantine and a Call to Action to The Government
The Big Travel Podcast
Good news at least for those people who have had two UK administered vaccines. From 19th July we can now go to amber list countries without quarantining on return. BUT at the moment this is just for UK administered vaccines meaning the country is not yet open to inbound tourism. Travel needs to be two-way! We need people in the UK to support our business too. Whilst we are aware it needs to be done safely we also need to get aviation and travel moving even further.
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119. UK TRAVEL UPDATE; New Rules, Traffic Lights, Vaccinations
The Big Travel Podcast
A Big Travel Podcast special on the latest UK Travel Update; the new rules, the changes in the traffic light ratings, vaccinations soon to be taken into account and much more. A ten minute episode of essential listening.
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118. Olly Mann; Guns On Trucks in Malawi, Swim-Up Bar Piña Coladas, Greyhounds and The American Dream
The Big Travel Podcast
Olly Mann, from Answer Me This podcast fame, his new The Retrospectors and much more, loves nothing more than researching trivia especially with travel. We talk Wrigley’s chewing gum and decapitation, leaving your baby outside a pub, people who get erections on public transport, a love for Luton Airport, the misleading American Dream, cocktails worth shortening your life for, having a bottom accident on an African roadside (yes this episode does feature the S word) and much more.
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117. Huw Wyn; Arabian Nights in Cairo, Hitching Through Nepal, Tibetan Medicine in Scotland and Tom Hardy Dropping into his Festival
The Big Travel Podcast
Into The Wild Festival promoter Huw Wyn grew up in his mother’s hotel in Wales then moved to Spain. We talk growing up feral in Andalucia, hitchhiking across Europe, fish-packing in the Netherlands, Glastonbury, Arabian Nights in Cairo, the poetic side of being a London bin man, orphanages in India, Mother Theresa in Calcutta, meeting the Dalai Lama, studying Tibetan medicine in Scotland, the remote Buddhist kingdom in Ladakh, hitching 2000 miles through Nepal, Tom Hardy at his festival and much
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116. Anne Sebba; Parisian Women and Nazis, Film Stars in Rome, ‘Communists’ in Sing Sing Prison
The Big Travel Podcast
The author of one of Lisa’s favourite books, Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s, Anne Sebba explores the lives of women ‘writers and fighters’. As a journalist and author she's worked in film-star-filled 70s Rome, moved to New York with a baby, camped in the Mexico desert with Wallis Simpson’s free-diving step-son, had her camera film thrown into the Ganges while tracing Mother Theresa and, for her most recent book on Ethel Rosenburg, to Belarus and Sing Sing
info_outlineLemn Sissay, BAFTA nominated writer and one of the world’s most brilliant poets, was taken from his Ethiopian mother at birth against her will and after a stinging rejection from foster parents spent his childhood in care. He published his first book of poetry age 17, selling it to striking miners in Lancashire. Although a large part of him will ‘always feel like that rootless kid’, poetry, he says, gave him wings and he began his travels not just around the world but also the both physical and emotional journey to find his birth family (as beautifully written in his book My Name is Why).
On this episode we cover:
Being conceived in Athens
His Ethiopian mother’s arrival in London in 1966
His father being a pilot for Ethiopian Airlines
The magic and history of Ethiopia
People knowing Ethiopia due to the famine
The first migration a person makes being from the womb into the open air
A social worker taking the baby against his mother’s will
Being fostered by the Greenwood family in Lancashire
Family trips to Scotland to visit his grandparents
Being put into a children’s home at 12
Losing all his family
Spending a lot of his formative years feeling it was his fault
The care system being very punishment orientated
The trauma of being thought of as intrinsically bad
Still finding life beautiful
The unspoken heroes brought up in care now making the world a better place
Poetry being in him from the moment he was born
Knowing he would become a poet age 12
Selling poetry to striking miners in Lancashire age 17
Poetry putting him on planes, enabling him to travel
The transformative experience of his first trip abroad (to Germany to perform)
German cakes and breakfasts
Lisa fighting the corner for British cakes
Cakeology (!) and the resurgence of interest in British cakes
The cakes of Germany being like miniature palaces
(There is a lot of conversation about cake)
Regretting not learning a language
Coronavirus meaning he’s missed Dubai, Ethiopia, India, the USA and Australia
Being very defined in what he wanted in life – to find his mother and to be a poet
Poetry paying for his physical journey to find his family
Finding his mother when he was 21, after a long search
His mother working for the UN in the Gambia
Her fleeing of Ethiopia in 1974
Flying to Africa for the first time to meet his mother
Sending cash for his flight in an envelope from Lancashire to Brixton!
The Senegalese man obsessed with Chris Rhea’s Lady in Red
How travel puts you out of your comfort zone
Communication without language means you have to lose your fear
The fun and trick to bartering
The vulnerability of not knowing the rules
People on the plane from Senegal to Gambia who worked with his mum
Golden wings of dust driving through the Gambian sunset
The moment he met his mother
How travel makes its way into our language; making life journeys, navigating our problems, finding pathways, taking flight
How the relationship with his birth family has developed
Ethiopian Airlines being part of his DNA
The aviation industry in the 1960s being like a village
Lisa going to Addis Ababa to interview Ethiopian model Liya Kebede
And New York to interview chef Marcus Samuelsson and author Maaza Mengiste
Lisa meeting her Fiji-Indian family for the first time
Looking at his mother’s, brothers’ and sisters’ faces for the first time
How we can define ourselves as people of the world
People will only call themselves by a colour when they’re in the minority
The incredible photo of his pilot father with the Emperor’s lion
His father’s death in a plane crash in storm on New Year’s Day
Taking a BBC film crew to the Simian mountains where the crash happened
Finding pieces of plane and fuselage
Finding the place where his father died being like the beginning of the rest of his life
Loving the Hilton in Addis Ababa where his father partied and his mother got married
Staying next to Nick Cave in the Amadari Hotel in Bali
Bathing underneath the Balinese stars
What Nick Cave is like on holiday
The Emirates Literary Festival
Feeling at peace in the Scottish Highlands
Loving New York and Penang in Malaysia –
How the food is always a reflection of the people
How you can have the greatest journeys in your own village
Wanting to give the gift of travel to kids in care
Travel broadens the mind, but the new experience broadens the mind
Migration, travelling, immigrants…all what it takes to be human