in this episode of this cultural life, the radio 4 podcast, he reveals his formative influences and experiences, and how at the age of 86, he's still as fired up as ever. there's an anger. is there? i think that's what drives you. well, you can't see it happen... you can't see it happen and be indifferent, you know, you can't. if there's something that puts fuel in the tank, it's seeing hope destroyed, you know? camera crew's ready. i think in my acting days, i did a tiny bit of bbc radio. oh, you did? it might have been in this very studio some 60—odd years ago. really, here? fantastic. well, we've got to dig those performances from the vault.

i can't think what it was. it was something. ken loach, welcome to this cultural life. it's a great pleasure to come. and good to see you. you, too. you were born in 1936. you grew up in the midlands. tell me about your family. what did your parents do? my father was an electrical engineer. took his apprenticeship in the mines. the whole family, my father's family were miners from the warwickshire coalfields, and he worked at alfred herbert's machine tool factory all his life. ao—odd years. skilled worker, then? yes, a skilled worker, electrician. and he had a work ethic that was formidable. he worked seven days a week and my mother had been a hairdresser. but like women of that time, it was a matter of pride for my father that she should not have to work. but... ..lovely woman, very kind. what sort of cultural upbringing did you have at home? well, it was a very normal, i guess, suburban house,

semidetached, in nuneaton. erm... cinemas nearby? there were cinemas, but we didn't go as a family. i was never very interested in the cinema. i was more interested in theatre. was it that the films didn't appeal, the sort of thing that was being shown? itjust didn't attract me. i mean, i cared passionately about the theatre from having been in the school play, the tempest, at age 11, as a nymph or something. and i don't know, i just got the bug. there was a rep company that came to nuneaton three days a week — this is the late �*40s, early �*50s, and it's... ..it became what i was obsessed by. on this cultural life, i ask my guest to nominate the people, places, the experiences, the works, cultural works that have had a direct influence on their own creativity — and your first choice is perhaps surprising.

you've nominated a week that you spent in blackpool in the 1940s, seeing variety shows on the pier. who did you see? yes. once a year, we went for a week in blackpool, and blackpool was at its height — this is the late �*40s. we might have gone, even gone during the war, i don't remember. it was the great comics of the time, jewel and warriss, ethel revnell and gracie west, nat jackley, albert modley and donald peers, the singer. it was a great experience. it was the highlight of the year. but the great comic was frank randle. frank randle was scurrilous. he was a little fella, wiry little fella, and he had two or three characters. they were sketches, rather — it wasn't stand—up, it was sketches — and he'd be a vulgar old man. he'd take his teeth out. and it was... it was bawdy humour. it was... it was risque for the time, but by today's standards,

it wouldn't be seen as... it'd be seen as very tame. but he was a great comic. your name? clutterbuck. jeremiah clutterbuck. aye. now, listen, jerry. jerry? mrjerry, if you don't mind, i have a handle to my name. so sorry, mr buttercluck... clutterbuck, shuttlecock. i'll stand the whole book from thee! i was only saying, - mrcluckinghen, erm... my name is cattletruck... erm, chutterpluck. .. i'll have no more of this. calm yourself. 0h! he would generate laughter that was extraordinary. my father would be weeping with laughter, and my mother too. for a kid, it was, it wasjust overwhelming, erm... ..and just the joy of it. and i think that... that does stay with you. and i've worked with comics a lot, and i think it stems from thatjust enjoyment of seeing a full house

rock with laughter. seeing what it's like to get a reaction on a stage, did that... were you tempted by performance to work on the stage yourself? oh, i was desperate. i mean, the other big influence was going to stratford—on—avon, we lived 30 miles from stratford. i used to cycle to stratford with friends or on my own, cycle to stratford in an evening and cycle back at midnight, having seen the great plays and the great actors of the time, olivier or gielgud or michael redgrave or all the stalwarts of the shakespeare memorial theatre, as it was then. you studied law at oxford, didn't you? yeah. why didn't you pursue that career, or were you never particularly tempted ? my father was desperate that i should do well academically, and i was lucky i passed the exam to get into oxford. extraordinary. and did law. but the theatre had got too big a hold.

we were doing play after play in the university dramatic society, orthe musicals, and, um... ijoined an inn of court to be a barrister, and i thought, "this isn't for me." when you read the cases in court, they sound fantastic. but of course, that's the tip of a very big iceberg. and i knew that... ..i�*d got stamina, but not that kind of stamina. and he was very disappointed. how far do you think can we see the, you know, the legacy of those legal studies at oxford in your films, particularly in that pursuit of social justice? i think it comes from somewhere else. when i was at university, i wasn't particularly political. but the thing i did see at oxford was wealth. i mean, i'd done national service, two years in the raf before i went to university, and that was an education because, i mean, we were sort of, you know, just a normal household, modest but not poor.

and going into, being in a billet with 21 other lads... there were people who were really poor there. and i went from that to oxford. and, my god, people were rich there. and there were people there who knew they would rule the world, who had a sense of entitlement that was extraordinary. and seeing this wealth on parade and the casual ease with which people lived a wholly different life, i mean, that's what stayed with me at oxford. your next choice for this programme is joining the team that produced the bbc�*s wednesday plays in the mid—1960s. theme music plays you directed ten of these plays, including arguably

the two best known ones, up thejunction, and cathy come home. before we talk about the individual works, what were you and the team trying to achieve with the wednesday plays? what was the ethos? well, it was an extraordinary moment of luck. the bbc hired a producer called sydney newman, and his brief was contemporary drama, straight after the nine o'clock news on a wednesday. and you had an hour and a quarter, hour and a half — unheard of now. and the ethos was to challenge the news. the news went before us, and we said, "we're going to be the real news. "we're going to say what's really happening." and we found that our... we needed to be on the streets, you know, we wanted to be out there really filming life and putting stories in amongst it. and there was no way the bbc would allow us to do it. so when... there was a gap in the schedules,

i got hold of nell dunn's book, up thejunction, which is like little vignettes of working class life in battersea. kids up to mischief, the energy and mischief of youth. and i said, "we can do this." the book is very cinematic as it is, very quickly put six or seven stories together, link the characters. we had a script in a few days. we got a 16mm camera, shot in four days. we shot half the film. came back into the studio, and instead of visual mixing, we knew there was a 16mm backup recording of what had gone on in the studio in case of emergencies. and against much complaining, we used the 16mm backup copy and cut it into the 16mm we'd shot on the streets and we'd made a film. what you focus on is the lives of three young women in south london... yes.

..and their relationships with men. but one woman in particular. yes. who ends up having an illegal backstreet abortion. yes. how far have you gone, love? about three months. 0h. then you've only got a small problem in there, haven't you? _ how much money have you got, love? £4. hand it over. how's your mum keeping, annie? oh, she's all right, love. has she still got - that lodger of hers? you bet she has. oh, good. you know, you don't look more than 17. l i'm 18 next month. did you know when you were making it that this drama would become, or was potentially very controversial stuff? well, you never know. but i think we knew we were up to something. we knew we were up to something, and we knew we were breaking the rules, and we were lucky enough to get away with it. and sydney newman, who was head of drama, he gave us his support, and we weren't micro—managed, you see, like now. i mean, nobody knew about it until it was done.

until it was broadcast? no, until it was finished. yeah. so it just happened. but fortunately, mary whitehouse wasjust beginning her tirade to clean up the bbc and she took against it and waged... ..created a hell of a fuss. as a teacher responsible for sex education, i had it laid upon me to give children sex education based on chastity before marriage and fidelity within it. and the truth was that my work was being totally undercut by the way premarital sex was being made normal on television. well, i... ten million people watched up thejunction. extraordinary figures. mm. did mary whitehouse's reaction help you, do you think? it helped us in the extent that they knew about us. there were stories in the press and there was a thing called late night line—up, which was a great show on bbc two, where if you'd been in... you created a fuss,

you were on late night line—up to defend yourself. what we were trying to do there was to capture an actuality. erm... now, we know in actual life that the important things are not the positions we stand in and the way we express ourselves. we tried to capture an actuality flavour. the sort of excitement... but it isn't actuality. no, but we tried to get as near as we could to it. this is the point. they were extraordinary times, really, now, looking back. but when you are dealing with such important issues and, as you say, you're coming straight off the back of the news and you're a young director, did it feel like a huge responsibility given the amount of people that were watching your work? it felt like an opportunity. i mean, at the time, there was, there was a whole campaign beginning about, about legalising termination because of the, the backstreet abortions were appalling.

they were the only recourse many women had. mm. so that was in the air. and that wasn't done lightly. i mean, you know, when i talk about it, it's with enthusiasm, but it wasn't done lightly. and there are voices from doctors and medics within the film talking about it and why it was so serious and why the law had to change. cathy come home, which you directed in the following year, 1966, is about the effects of unemployment and poverty and homelessness, particularly, on a young couple. mm. 12 million people watched that drama. devastating stuff. what are your abiding memories of shooting cathy come home? we shot it in three weeks, mainly hand—held camera, 16mm. we went to different parts of the country. and, i mean, iwas learning the trade. so, i mean, it was...

it was very rough and ready. but again, i think we knew we were on to something. mm. homelessness was a big issue then. the act of wrenching a child from its mother... ..is as horrendous an act by the state as you can think. and for social circumstances to dictate it is acceptable to take children from their mother is shocking. so we thought, well, you know, that... ..that�*s the end of the film. cathy come home was so powerful, it had such an effect that it led to not only the inevitable complaints, but questions in parliament and the homelessness charity, shelter, was established, i think, the following year. did those tangible effects of the drama set you on a course for the sort of films and the sort of work that you do

in the decades afterwards? i was already on that course, really. yes, the effect was far greater than we could have expected. but the, the devastation of what poverty and hardship can do to people's lives has, i guess, always been a central theme with the writers i've worked with and the team i've worked with. your next choice for this programme is czech cinema of the 1960s. which film—makers, which movies in particular are you thinking? ah, yes, that was, the czech cinema was a huge delight because of their humanity and their warmth and their... ..respect for people. give us an example of a scene that sticks in your mind from one of those films from the time that really struck a chord with you or made you think, "i'm going to try something like that." the scene in the blonde in love, which is a story of factory girls in a czech village shortly

after the war, or during the war, the men have gone to the army. they're desperate for boyfriends. they get the word that a number of the military are going to be billeted in the village. they're expecting bright young fellas in uniforms. and of course, the soldiers are approaching middle age and they've already got wives at home. and they're not... they're not what the girls had in mind at all. there's a great scene where the dance is arranged. the girls come in and they sit on one side of the dance hall, and the men come in and sit on the other side, and of course, their great disappointment. and that scene, the observation between the two sides...

one bloke, he takes one soldier's wedding ring off and it rolls across the floor and gets under the table of one of the groups of girls. music plays and of course, he's got to try and get it back. and it's a very funny scene, but it looks as though he set up the dance and observed it... ..as well as setting up specific things to happen, which of course you've got

to shoot directly. you made your first feature film in 1967. that was poor cow, which starred carol white, who you'd work with in cathy come home. yes, yes. and then in 1969, kes, one of the greatest british films of all time. i mean, how much was the visual style of kes influenced by some of that czech cinema? kes, first, was a milestone. and the key figure there was the cameraman, chris menges. i made good friends with chris, and chris said a very important thing. he said, "what happens in front of the camera is more important "than what happens... . behind the camera." within the camera. that you've got to concentrate. don't try and be clever with the camera. create something of worth that you're going to film and respect it. and ifeel that's what czech cinema did. and that was our model for kes. and i never went back

to the hand—held, chase—the—action. it was always, no, let's observe it. there is a great sense of naturalism in that film. there's a scene which i remembered particularly, with colin welland, who plays the teacher who's encouraging billy casper, asks him to talk to the class to explain his passion for the kestrel. good morning. entry of the gladiators. where have you been? went to see mr gryce, sir. for the stick? yes, sir. how many did you get? two. did it hurt? not bad. right. hope it didn't. go on, sit down. the kids in the classroom didn't know what was going to happen. david knew. and he... david bradley. david bradley, who played billy casper. he'd trained the kestrel himself with barry hines and richard, barry's brother. come on. tell us about this hawk. where'd you get it from? i found it, sir. where? in t'woods. where'd you keep it? ina shed. what do you feed it on? beef, mice, birds.

but isn't it cruel- to keep it in a shed? i mean, wouldn't it be happier flying free? i don't keep it in t'shed all the time, sir. i fly it every day. he was good at learning lines, but i said, "look, just know the story. know what you've got to say." and then it's a sort of partly remembered, partly improvised scene. and the boys hadn't heard it before. as far as one could make it, it was a live happening. so, billy didn't know what the questions would be. so, he was improvising, but also basing it on his own experience. yeah, yeah, yeah. when i got about 70 yards from middle of t'field, i called her. "kes, kes. come on, kes. come on, then. " nowt happened, so i thought, well, i better walk back and pick her up. so, while i were walking back, i saw her flying. she came like a bomb. about a yard off t'floor, like lightning. head still, and you couldn't hear t'wings, there weren't a sound from t'wings. and straight onto t'glove. wham! and she grabbed me for t'meat.

the next choice that you've made for this cultural life, you've chosen real people, people whose stories have fed into your films. mm. and you said in an email that you sent us, "people who have clarified and strengthened "a view of the world." mm. people like who? well, yes, that's, erm... i mean, we've been very lucky. and in the films we've done, which have been... i've tried to tell stories of everyday working class life, and also some pivotal moments in history. we did i, daniel blake about the cruelty of the benefit system. we filmed in a foodbank in newcastle. is this the queue for the foodbank? it is, aye. do you know long we'll be waiting? a canny long time, i reckon. been here ages already. and when we're doing the scene, there's a girl in the film who goes and she's so hungry, and the woman who took her round worked in food banks. and as she said, "who's taking her round?", she said before she began, she said, "can i help

you with your shopping?" jackie? yeah. would you be able to help katie with her shopping today, please? of course i can. thank you. hi, katie. thank you. so, we've got one adult and two children. yeah. come with me. what sensitivity to do that to someone who's begging for food. to say, "can i help you with your shopping?" you know, and when you see the courage and the sensitivity of people like that, how can you not tell their stories? we've got used to food banks. it's not news any more. but people are desperate. i mean, we saw people who were ashamed of their hunger. and hunger has a function. hunger has a function. it is a discipline. if you don't do the work you're told, you're hungry. you're still visibly moved at recalling those individual testimonies of people. so, you feel there is a responsibility, there's

almost an obligation. there's an anger, actually. is there? i think that's what drives you. well, you can't see it happen... you can't see it happen and be indifferent. you know, you can't. and i think that's what... if there's something that, you know, puts fuel in the tank, that's it. you know, it's anger. it's anger against seeing hope destroyed, you know. those are some of the issues that you are addressing in your films. mm. what effect do you want your films to have? do you want for people to come out of your films feeling as angry as you go into making them? i think you want to leave people with a question, you know, why do we allow this to happen? why do we allow this to happen in the knowledge of the hardship it causes? what is the possible answer? and it takes two years to make a film. mm. you know, very hard to do something that you don't believe in. as you say, each film takes about two years to make. you're now 86 years old. you've come here to our studio straight from an edit suite, another film, another social drama.

are you still as driven as you ever were? erm... well, yeah, i guess so. i guess so. i think, you know, you can't... you can't stop the frailties of age, really. and so, you know, sooner or later, time will run out. but it's being able to work with people, good people, talented people, to make a film is a huge privilege. to meet the people, to be able to tell their stories, to fashion it in the sharpest, best way we can. and what a privilege, you know? ken loach, thank you so much for sharing your cultural life. thanks very much. and for podcast episodes of this cultural life, go to bbc sounds, or wherever you get your podcasts.

hello there. at its peak on wednesday, storm gerrit brought gusts of winds just shy of 90 miles an hour. and despite the storm pulling away, it's still pretty windy out there with gusts of winds generally ranging from 50 to 70 miles an hour across the country. so a blustery afternoon in store and still some showers. here's gerrit now off into scandinavia where the warnings here remain in force. but for us, it's a case of sunny spells and scattered showers. some of the showers heavy with rumbles of thunder and lightning across wales and north—west england once again will see that line of persistent showery rain drifting its way slowly, south and east, never really getting into the london area. a fairly narrow but intense line of showers from lincolnshire

into south—west england. elsewhere, a windy afternoon with further sunny spells and scattered showers to come. a cooler story in the far north of scotland. once again, top temperatures generally between four and seven degrees. but elsewhere, we're looking at 9 to 13 degrees the high. now, as we go through the night, that line of rain will push its way down through the south—east. showers continue into the north and with the wind swinging round to a northerly direction, there'll be a wintry component to higher ground in scotland here, low single figures. but elsewhere we'll see overnight lows between five and eight celsius. so into friday, wintry showers continue to higher ground in the north. a line of showery rain through northern ireland into northern england, sunny spells and scattered showers for the rest of england and wales. still blustery, but the winds slowly easing down. top temperatures generally between five and 11 celsius. now, if you're heading off for the weekend, travel plans for new year's eve, please keep abreast of the forecast. there's another area of low pressure, perhaps not quite as intense as storm gerrit, but nevertheless, another spell of wet and very windy weather,

widespread gales likely and yes, a combination of rain, sleet and snow, potentially even at lower levels across northern england and parts of scotland. so as we move into sunday, new year's eve, that area of low pressure will continue to drift its way steadily eastwards, we'll see spiralling around that low, a rash of showers. it'll be windy across england and wales, slightly lighter winds in scotland, slightly quieter story, but it will start to get just that little bit cooler. and as we move into new year's day, the rain will continue, but those temperatures will gradually ease away.

live from london, this is bbc news. as israel broadens its ground offensive across gaza, the hamas—run health ministry says 210 palestinians have been killed in the past 2a hours. police in greater manchester declare a major incident after a tornado sweeps off roofs and leaves thousands without power. tensions simmer in taiwan. as the island prepares for a presidential poll, beijing ramps up the pressure. and the revival of vinyl — we look at why record sales in britain have reached their highest level since 1990.

hello, i'm lucy hockings. israel is broadening its ground offensive across the centre and south of gaza. the hamas—run health ministry says more than 210 palestinians have been killed in the past 2a hours, with 21,320 deaths in the last 11 weeks. there's also been an intensification of fighting across the israel—lebanon border in recent days, sparking fears of a wider conflict. a member of israel's war cabinet has warned that the military will take matters into its own hands if the lebanese government and the international community doesn't stop cross—border attacks by the hezbollah group. benny gantz said time for a diplomatic solution was running out. here's our middle east correspondent yolande knell. bundles ofjoy in a time of anguish. iman tends to three of her quadruplets recently born in one of gaza's overwhelmed hospitals. one remains in intensive care.