"The Choice" on Radio 4 is now running - want to listen to my handiwork?

As I blogged back on 16th July that I had finished working on this year's series of The Choice for Radio 4, where Michael Buerk (OCF) in conversation with people who have faced a life-changing choice. They are now going out so I can now tell you more about them.

The first programme went out on 12th August whilst I was away so I am afraid it isn't available on iPlayer anymore Michael talked to Heather Pratten about her decisions to help her terminally ill sons in very different ways. This was an emotional programme to make and to listen to were a mother had to decide how to help her terminally ill sons die.


Programe 2 went out on August 19th so you can listen to it on iPlayer for another 3 days.

On The Choice this week, Micahel Buerk talks to Romy Tiongco. He spent a lifetime fighting poverty - first as a Catholic priest, then as a Christian Aid worker. Where he comes from - the Philippines - poverty is made worse by violence and corruption. He'd taken it on as a young man, before moving to this country with his wife. When he decided to return to the Philippines he did not realise it would draw him back into a dangerous and murky world and present him with the most difficult choice of his life. After his best friend was killed, the people called on him to challenge corruption by standing for political office - a choice that would put his own life on the line.

A excellent story of a 'little guy' standing up to strongholds at great personal cost.

Programme 3 goes out on this Thursday at 9am and again at 9:30pm

On The Choice this week Michael Buerk talk to Elissa Wall who was born into the strange, narrow world of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints - an American sect that had broken away from the Mormon church. It was a group that believed in religious devotion, hard work, female subservience, the virtues and the clothes of the prairie puritans - and polygamy. Elissa was married off at 14 to a 19-year-old cousin - a relationship she hated. After several miscarriages, and a stillbirth, she faced the toughest choice of her young life - to stay with the community and the church, which was all she knew, or to leave. That would mean, not only separation from her mother and sisters, maybe for ever, but taking on the man who had ruled her life, the cult leader Warren Jeffs.

This is a story of power and control as well as abuse that you wouldn't expect to hear about in western culture.

Programme 4 is the final one in the current series but the BBC have not released any information about it. When they do I will post it here.