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The History Hour
Music producer Sonny Roberts and treating diabetes
The History Hour
Oct 25, 2025

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.

Sonny Roberts’ daughter tells us about how her father created the UK’s first black-owned music studio - this programme contains outdated and offensive language. Music producer and professor emerita at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Lucy Durán takes us through the history of music studios around the world.

How a Macedonian scientist’s discovery led to treatments for diabetes and obesity, and the story of the Kenyan ecologist who became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Plus, the mysterious sinking of a British oil tanker in Indonesia in the the 1950s and how the first lottery scratchcard was invented by an American mathematician.

As well as the story of the first South American to win the International Surfing Association world title back in 2004.

Contributors:

Cleon Roberts – daughter of Sonny Roberts.

Lucy Duran – music producer and professor at the School of Oriental and African studies at the University of London.

Svetlana Mojsov – Macedonian scientist who discovered the hormone called GLP-Joseph McCorry – who was on the San Flaviano oil tanker.

Wanjira Mathai – daughter of Wangari Maathai.

Sofia Mulanovich – three-time world surfing champion.

John Koza – the inventor of the scratchcard.

(Photo: Jamaican record producer Sonny Roberts Record Shop in Willesden Junction, London, UK in December 1982. Credit: David Corio/Redferns via Getty)

More Episodes

Aug 15, 2026
The Mau Mau uprising and man-eating lions

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes focussing on Kenya.

We hear about Muthoni Kirima, one of the last Mau Mau fighters to come out of hiding and lay down her arms.

Caroline Elkins, Professor of History at Harvard University, discusses the brutality of the conflict between Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army, the British and Kenyan loyalists.

Next, when Princess Elizabeth became queen while staying at the Treetops Hotel, a lodge in the Aberdare National Park.

In 1997, scientists travelled to Kenya, in search of a cave believed to have been the den of the man-eating lions that terrorised railway workers in 1898.

Plus, we hear how Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga signed an unprecedented power-sharing deal to end a wave of violence that left more than 1,200 people dead.

And the heartwarming story of the friendship between a baby hippo and a 130-year-old giant tortoise.

Finally for our Sporting Witness story, we head to the first Ultimate Frisbee World Championship in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1983.

Contributors: Caroline Elkins - Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Muthoni Kirima - Field Marshall in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. Frank Gillard - BBC correspondent. Thomas Gnoske - Scientist. Alan Patterson - British Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson's grandson. Maina Kiai - Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights in 2008. Maini Schildt - Swedish Ultimate Frisbee player.

(Photo: Mau Mau suspects are rounded up by police outside the camp in Manyani, Kenya, 1955. Credit: Getty Images/Authenticated News)


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Music producer Sonny Roberts and treating diabetes

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