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Comedian Marcus Brigstocke brings his popular event to The Bath Festival for the first time! He will be joined by panelists, author and campaigner Dr Rachel Clarke, Channel 4 News journalist Symeon Brown and comedian Rachel Parris to review the news stories of the week. Listen as they tear apart the tabloids, play havoc with the headlines and blast the broadsheets; picking out the topical, heart-warming and funny stories of the day.

Dr Rachel Clarke is an NHS palliative care doctor and writer who lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and two children. Rachel is the author of three Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction books. Breathtaking, published in January 2021, reveals what life was really like working on NHS COVID-19 wards during the first wave of the pandemic. Dear Life, shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography Award, long-listed for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize and chosen as a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, is based on her work in a hospice. It explores love, loss, grief, dying and what really matters at the end of life. The Costa biography judges described it as: “A beautifully written, powerfully moving book that tackles an emotive and difficult subject with professional compassion and personal insight.” Your Life in My Hands, published in 2017, documents life as a junior doctor on the NHS frontline. Before going to medical school, Dr Rachel Clarke was a broadcast journalist. She produced and directed current affairs documentaries, primarily for Channel 4, focusing on subjects such as Al Qaeda, the Iraq War and the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She began her medical degree at the age of 29, qualifying as a doctor in 2009. Rachel writes for The Guardian, Sunday Times, New York Times, Independent, New Statesman, Telegraph, Prospect, BMJ, NEJM and Lancet. She makes regular television and radio appearances on, for example, BBC Question Time, BBC Radio 4 Today, BBC Newsnight, Channel 4 News, GMB, BBC Woman’s Hour, ITV News and Sky News, among others. Rachel cares deeply about helping patients live the end of their lives as fully and richly as possible – and in the power of human stories to build empathy and inspire change.

Symeon Brown: Symeon Brown is a reporter and journalist at Channel 4 News. He was shortlisted for an Orwell Prize in 2019 and shortlisted at the 2018 British Journalism Awards. He has written for a range of publications including Vice, The Guardian, Huffington Post, CNN, New Statesman and The Voice.

Rachel Parris is a BAFTA Nominated comedian, musician actor and improviser, best know for her viral segments on BBC2’s The Mash Report. She has appeared on Live At The Apollo, Mock The Week, QI, Would I Lie To You, Hypothetical and recently, Comedians Giving Lectures, and Harry Hill’s ClubNite on channel 4, as well as a one-off archive show The Girls Guide to TV, for BBC2. As a musical comedian, she has won critical acclaim for her solo shows which have run at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Soho Theatre London and on national tours, and has been awarded The Chortle Award for Best Variety Act, Best Musical Comedy Show (Whats On London), Best Jokes of the Fringe (Telegraph), nominated for Best Show 2016 (Funny Women) and recommended as a Pick of the Fringe by The Guardian who described it as “Beautifully crafted and performed…tears of laughter“. She is also an experienced improviser, and is a founding member of the award-winning improv comedy smash hit Austentatious, an Edinburgh Fringe sell-out show, UK Tour sell-out, with a residency in London’s West End and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Rachel also guests with the Comedy Store Players and Whose Line is it Anyway. She appears regularly on BBC Radio 4, including in The Now Show, The News Quiz and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and a forthcoming stand-up special. As an actor she has appeared in the IT Crowd Special on Channel 4, BBC2’s Murder In Successville, Plebs on ITV2, Russell Howard’s Good News, satirical sketch show Revolting and more recently, in There She Goes for BBC 4.

Twitter: @marcusbrig

Instagram: @marcusbrigstocke

Facebook: @marcusbrigstocke