‘I’ve certainly been told to shut up on occasions’ … Jon Boden A few weeks ago Jon Boden, the current BBC Folk Singer of the Year, went to a friend’s home studio in Sheffield and recorded an unaccompanied version of the famous old folk song The Larks They Sang Melodious... 

My Child’s Big Fat Birthday Party, BBC1 Photograph: BBC/North One Television /Karen Zetter/BBC I wish I was a kid again. It looks brilliant now, especially if you’re filthy rich and spoiled rotten. The birthday parties I remember involved a few chocolate fingers, a paper cup of squash,... 

Bizarre details . . . Stock Car Sewell. Photograph: ITV / Rex Features Incongruous doesn’t even begin to cover it. Stock Car Sewell (Radio 4, Saturday) was a love letter, of sorts, from art critic Brian Sewell to, um, stock car racing. “Like most men,” he explained in that... 

Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 classic Spartacus. Photograph: Cine Text / Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd. / Allstar “Oh, that’s what I want to do,” I remember thinking when I watched Spartacus for the first time. I must have been about 11 or 12 at the time, so I suspect...