16/03/2011

This week Libby Purves is joined by Jean-Marie Akkerman, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Katie Piper and Laura Lee. Jean-Marie Akkerman, a fourth generation circus performer, is founder of Cirque Nova, the only circus in the world working specifically with people who have physical, learning and mental health disabilities . Among is his liberating ideas has been to adapt trapeze swings to enable wheelchair-users to fly through the air upside down. Cirque Nova is one of the Comic Relief supported projects. Sir Cameron Mackintosh is the theatre producer who, over the last thirty years, has produced a string of hits - from Cats and Miss Saigon to Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables and My Fair Lady. Opening this month is his first new musical in ten years, 'Betty Blue Eyes', based on Alan Bennett and Malcolm Mowbray's comic film 'A Private Function'. 'Betty Blue Eyes' is at the Novello Theatre. Katie Piper was badly scared after a horrific acid attack destroyed her face two years ago. Since then she has shown extraordinary determination to overcome the physical and emotional damage wrought by the attack. A new four-part documentary for Channel 4, 'Katie: My Beautiful Friends', follows her over a year as she continues her recovery and sets up a charity to help others living with disfigurement. Laura Lee is the CEO of Maggie's Centres. Fifteen years ago she was an oncology nurse working in Edinburgh. One of her patients, Maggie Keswick Jencks had terminal cancer and through her long sessions of chemotherapy she and Laura began to discuss whether it was possible to build somewhere that could offer support to anyone affected by cancer. The result was Maggie's Centre, which Laura ran and they went on to build another fifteen centres. The centres were designed by top architects and they are currently feature in an exhibition at the V&A in London.