Felicity Ward is a comedian, actor and writer who has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, Russell Howard’s Good News and Mock the Week. Earlier this year, she participated in Australia’s Dancing with the Stars making it all the way to the finale and last year, she starred as Hannah Howard, Australia’s answer to David Brent, in a new version of The Office.

She has long been a mental health advocate after channeling her experiences into a stand-up routine about her experience of dealing with anxiety and depression. She subsequently presented her own documentary on the topic, Felicity’s Mental Mission, in 2014 and hosted a BBC audio series, Appisodes, which sees her try different smartphone apps in an attempt to solve her mental health issues.

Her story choices range from a podcast of couples working through the toughest challenges of their relationship, a TV show which Felicity insists is the perfect studio comedy, a book which insists we all need to lighten up and a classic comedy about a couple of con artists on the French Riviera in the 1980s.

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Emily Beecham is an award winning actress who has appeared on TV and in film for almost two decades. In 2016 she starred alongside George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson and Ralph Fiennes in the Coen Brothers comedy Hail, Caesar! and in 2019, she won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in Little Joe.

Emily has appeared in many TV dramas ranging from Emily Mortimer’s The Pursuit of Love and Lewis to the futuristic Into The Badlands and the more recent King & Conqueror set in the Middle Ages in which she starred with James Norton on BBC One.

Emily’s podcast choice takes us on a hunt for acting legend Tom Hanks, her book choice shows us how to gain inner peace, her movie choice is a masterclass in raw emotion from fellow actress Samantha Morton and her tv choice is about three terrible women from a terribly funny comedian. Her story selections show her love of acting, the need for acceptance and resilience and the admiration she has for others in her profession.

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This week’s guest Genevieve Turley is a make-up artist and beauty influencer who has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on social media thanks to her hilarious take on the beauty industry online. Having started her career as a nurse in the Air Force, Genevieve turned her attention to her lifelong love of make-up and beauty after having had children.

Initially, Genevieve focussed on bridal make-up with Instagram merely a tool for promoting her business. But one day she posted a funny Reel on Instagram and before she knew it, she had gone viral with the Kardashians sharing her post. Now with over a hundred thousand followers on TikTok and well over half a million on Instagram, Gen is a fully fledged influencer.

Her choices are as varied as her career but throughout you can see Gen’s love of stories that show both the lighter and darker side of life. Gen takes us from the experiences of women in Vichy France during the Second World War and life on a council estate in the Eighties in England to a Quentin Tarantino-penned romantic adventure and an interview series that examines struggles and how people can benefit from them.

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Actor Taj Atwal has graced stage and screen for over a decade, starting off with appearances in Miranda and Ruth Jones’ Stella. Since then she has gone on to star alongside the likes of Liam Neeson, Monica Bellucci, Lily James & Dame Emma Thompson.

Taj has had series regular roles in the BBC dramas Line of Duty and The Syndicate as well as comedies like Hullraisers on Channel 4, Daddy Issues on BBC Three and Trying on Apple TV+ and many more.

Her story choices go from a British council estate to a flatshare in North London via the history of Asians in Britain and the podcast that launched the medium into the mainstream. Her choices reflect her wide-ranging career and Taj’s passion and dedication to people and their stories.

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Jen Brister is a comedian and writer who has appeared on some of the UK’s best loved comedy shows such as Live at the Apollo, QI, Mock the Week and BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz. She hosts her own podcast Memory Lane with fellow comedian Kerry Godliman as well as appearing on some of the country’s top podcasts such as Off Menu with Ed Gamble & James Acaster, The Guilty Feminist with Deborah Frances-White and Never Live It Down with Vogue Williams.

Jen gave a TEDx talk about changing the way we raise our boys in 2018 and published her first book, The Other Mother, in 2019 about life raising her twin sons with her partner, Chloe.

Jen’s story choices range from a gritty gang vs cops tale set in Baltimore, Maryland to a movie about the spying and surveillance carried out on potential enemies of the state in East Berlin during the Cold War. She described her book choice as “the funniest book ever written” and her podcast choice is one of the best ever made, setting the standard for audio production for over twenty years.

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Louisa Young is a novelist, biographer and songwriter who has been nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Costa Novel Award and the Carnegie Medal as well as winning Audiobook of the Year at the National Book Awards.

She has written several children’s books with her daughter as well as a biography of her grandmother, Kathleen Scott, widow of Captain Robert Scott. Previously, she worked as a journalist for titles such as Tatler & Marie-Claire as well as The Guardian and The Sunday Times.

Louisa is currently writing the next three instalments in the Cazalet Chronicles, the cult series written by her late aunt, Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Her eclectic choices take us from 1950s Scotland and London to New York in the 1980s and even to Dolly Parton’s Tennessee. Her love of character, quirks and nostalgia are no surprise given she is a writer and her enthusiasm for each is infectious.

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Zachary Hart is an actor who graduated from the Academy of Live & Recorded Arts in 2017 and headed straight to the Bridge Theatre in London to perform in legendary director Nic Hytner’s Julius Caesar. And he’s just kept going ever since.

He has appeared in many of the biggest shows on TV since his career rocketed into action: from Peaky Blinders on BBC One and The Witcher on Netflix to Masters of the Air and Slow Horses on Apple TV, Zachary’s been there.

Our discussion was as wide-ranging as his title choices but often came back to the importance of family and Zach’s laser-like focus on the craft of storytelling, be that through the written word or on-screen. We talked about what he called “The Perfect Film” as well as a TV show he rewatches all the time and a book that showed him a love he hankered after himself.

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In this episode of Like This Love This, we are joined by Alison Balsom, a classical trumpet player, music producer and educator, who started playing the trumpet at age seven and went on to graduate top of her class from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

She has since won Young Artist of the Year and later Female Artist of the Year at the Classical BRIT awards and Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards.

This year, she is playing at the Last Night of the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall for the second time.

Alison’s story choices are as wide and varied as they are interesting and even include an anecdote about Quentin Tarantino being on her first date with her husband - theatre and film director, Sir Sam Mendes.

From creativity and innovation across the cultural landscape to new ways of thinking about things: passion and dedication are always at the heart of the stories that appeal to her.

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