Portal:BBC

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear is a BBC television documentary series by Adam Curtis. It mainly consists of archive footage, with Curtis narrating. The series was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom in 2004. It has subsequently been aired in multiple countries and shown at various film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

The film compares the rise of the neoconservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, drawing comparisons between their origins, and remarking on similarities between the two groups. More controversially, it argues that radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organisation, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is a myth, or noble lie, perpetrated by leaders of many countries—and particularly neoconservatives in the U.S.—in a renewed attempt to unite and inspire their people after the ultimate failure of utopian ideas. (Full article...)

Nicholas Parsons during a recording of BBC Radio 4's Just a Minute. First aired in 1967, the comedy panel game was chaired by Parsons for over 50 years and it won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award in 2003.

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award is the main award of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony, which takes place each December. The winner is the sportsperson, judged by a public vote, to have achieved the most that year. The recipient must either be British or reside and play a significant amount of their sport in the United Kingdom. The winner is selected from a predetermined shortlist. The most recent award-winner is golfer Rory McIlroy, who won the 2025 award. (Full article...)

Helen Frances Rollason MBE (née Grindley; 11 March 1956 – 9 August 1999) was a British sports journalist and television presenter, who in 1990 became the first female presenter of the BBC's sports programme Grandstand. She was also a regular presenter of Sport on Friday, and of the children's programme Newsround during the 1980s.

Born in London, Rollason studied to become a PE teacher before entering radio broadcasting in 1980. After directing sport related content for Channel 4, where she helped to bring American football to British television, she anchored coverage of the 1987 World Student Games and 1988 Summer Olympics for ITV. Her work on Grandstand proved popular with viewers, and led to a number of other sports presenting roles for Rollason throughout the 1990s. As well as covering mainstream events such as the 1996 Summer Olympics, she became a champion of disability sports, helping to raise its profile and change its public and media perception. She presented sports bulletins for BBC Breakfast News and BBC News, and in 1996 was named as Sports Presenter of the Year. (Full article...)

The MediaCityUK development at Salford Quays, Greater Manchester, became a BBC production centre in 2011 with a number of BBC departments relocating there from London and other sites in the Manchester area. BBC Breakfast began broadcasting from the site in 2012.

Highlights from Wikipedia's Did you know

• ... that author Jacqueline Wilson described Dustbin Baby, the BBC dramatisation of her novel of the same name, as the best ever film adaptation of her work?

• ... that the idea of a two hooded coat to keep your date dry in the rain is genius?

• ... that a 1927 Wolseley motor car used in the 2008 BBC television adaptation The 39 Steps was previously used in the 1960s BBC television series Dr. Finlay's Casebook?

• ... that Clothes-Line, aired in 1937, was the first television programme on fashion history and also probably the first to feature a heavily pregnant female presenter?

• ... that crime novelist P. D. James listed the 2007 series Help Me Anthea, I'm Infested as one of the most embarrassing television programmes the BBC has ever produced?

• ... that in 2014, BBC Three cancelled a debate on being gay and Muslim featuring Asifa Lahore, a Muslim drag queen, citing security concerns at the mosque where it was filmed?
• ... that technical issues in the minute before their November 2024 BBC Radio 1 performance meant that South Arcade had to set up while the presenter was announcing them?
• ... that the pilot episode for a BBC series on a suicide prevention charity made some critics laugh?
• ... that Sarah Gibson, who formed a piano duo with Thomas Kotcheff, composed warp & weft inspired by the art of Miriam Schapiro, to be played today by the BBC Philharmonic at The Proms?