Man arrested on suspicion of murder after Ann Widdecombe found dead

19:58Edwina Currie:And she said, no, I like my own company. And I kind of know what she means by that. I went to her house once, I mean, quite a few years ago now. And it is a very isolated house. I mean, there are a few houses around it, but you wouldn't call it a village. It's not even a hamlet, I don't think. But she did really enjoy it. She said, I want to write books. I want to have lots of cats and just have a quiet life. Do you worry that she might be remembered now more by the manner of her leaving than the manner of her living? it's inevitable i suppose isn't it um i mean i think she has left a legacy of being a conviction politician and standing up for her religious views and all that i think younger generations will remember her for only one thing and that's strictly come dancing which she always told me she would never do these programs and she swore she would never do big brother which of course she then did she swore she would never write her autobiography and then after strictly she wrote her autobiography called Strictly Anne.

20:54Edwina Currie:So she was a woman of conviction, but her convictions could sway somewhat. Ian Dale on his friendship with Anne Widdicombe. How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast, made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? Or is he just the king of the attention economy?

21:31Edwina Currie:Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

21:38Edwina Currie:Coming up later on The World Tonight.

21:51Edwina Currie:Find out how England's footballing anthem has been reworked ahead of England's clash with Norway in the World Cup this weekend. But before that, let's talk about events in Spain which have had tragic consequences for so many people. A wildfire in Andalusia is still burning tonight after killing 12 people over the last 24 hours. It broke out in an area of steep ravines, destroying forests and swathes of scrubland in the southeastern Los Galados area, popular with many foreigners. More than 20 people are reported missing. Lucinda Courtois, her partner Riaz Chaitan and their teenage children have a holiday home close to where the fires started.

22:32Edwina Currie:Last night they fled, as Lucinda first explained.

22:35Iain Dale:We were at our holiday home at the villa and we had a call from my father just before half seven just letting us know that there were rumours of a fire and possible precautionary evacuation and we were just getting in the pool. Riaz and his son Zach had just arrived a few hours before and within 10 minutes of that call there were billows of black clouds coming over the ridge of the hills and over the ridge to the side we could suddenly see massive clouds black clouds and we were still in the pool and sort of suddenly said we'd better maybe move and then we heard from some neighbours that evacuation was happening and it was imminent the kids went up to the top of the house and said they could see flames along the ridge which we couldn't see from the pool so we packed up and pretty much ran and I would say within 30 minutes of the initial call from my dad we were driving into the wall of fire.

23:30Edwina Currie:Riaz, it must have been quite terrifying. It was. And the road that we were taking is actually the main road down. So when you start driving down that road and there's fire both sides, that sort of hits you that this could go really wrong. And luckily there were two coaches coming down as well, evacuating people who had to stop and turn around as well. So at some point you realised you couldn't get through that way. Yeah, so Lucinda was driving. She came onto the road. We went around the corner and all of a sudden there was just fire and you thought, stop straight away. we turned the car around and had to go back on ourselves and then you start thinking is the fire, are we driving into the fire in a different way now?

24:04Edwina Currie:Which gets quite scary. How were the children reacting to this? I mean what sort of age are the children you have between the two of you? 116, 117 I think there was definitely there was a silence in the car because I think everyone realised how serious the situation was. What have been the previous experiences? I mean there have been wildfires in southern Spain before of course but But is there a kind of a change in mood over this issue? Are people more concerned now than perhaps in previous years?

24:33Iain Dale:Yeah, there was a fire, I can't remember exactly, maybe 15 years ago, that was quite serious then, but I don't believe any deaths. Everybody's very aware on the mountain about how dry it is and that no one can use power tools and that everybody has to be careful and there's no outside fires. But there's been significant loss of life. We've lost family friends, close family friends. so there's a lot of people at the hotel we're at and yeah people are shattered they've lost you know well they don't know if they've lost their homes because none of us have allowed back so we don't know what's gone and what's not

25:06Edwina Currie:The other question I suppose just on that do you have people you know who are still unaccounted for?

25:13Iain Dale:We did but we've just heard that they've been found dead

25:17Edwina Currie:That must have been a terrible shock what you'd feared I guess but even so hearing it so definitively

25:24Iain Dale:Yeah Yeah, I mean, I don't know what to say. It's horrific.

25:29Edwina Currie:The other thing I suppose, Riaz, is what kind of official communication there has been over the last 24 hours. Have you heard anything or people pretty much relying on word of mouth between each other, WhatsApp groups and just kind of trying to monitor local radio and television? There is a local Wildfire Watch app, which has been really good. So people post on there. There's a mix of official communications on there. and like people posting saying i've got a house you can come and stay in or there's a farm or something to go to the official communications have been i'd say fairly minimal but given what they're doing and how quick it's changing i don't think any of us got an issue with that because they've got there are planes constantly flying above us with water in them the helicopters with water going through there's about nearly 200 firemen trying to fix this as well so we're getting that information that they're doing it but no information about how bad it is in vedar or when we can get back to the house, if we can go back to the house even.

26:26Edwina Currie:Lucinda Riaz, you're in a hotel now. I guess there are a lot of people in the same situation as you.

26:32Iain Dale:Loads. There's a lot here in the hotel with us. People just scattered wherever they could get to. But, you know, a lot of the people here, they don't know if they've got their homes. We were lucky we were on holiday, but for other people it's their whole life.

26:47Edwina Currie:That's Lucinda Courtois and Riaz Chetan now safe. Well, Stéphane Douer is Professor of Wildland Fire Science at Swansea University and edits the monthly International Journal of Wildland Fire. He warns that conditions in parts of the UK are at their optimum for wildfires to break out. I asked him if climate change had increased the risk of those fires. There's an absolute link between climate change and wildfires because you need specific weather conditions to make a fire possible. So the vegetation needs to be dry enough to become flammable. And with climate change, the conditions that make the vegetation flammable are becoming increasingly common.

27:25Edwina Currie:And that is high temperatures, low humidities and also strong winds. They can further obviously fan the flames. What about preparations that have been made for this? If we are expecting more wildfires in the future, in the summer season? Europe has invested quite heavily, especially in southern Europe, to provide for better firefighting. So that's better resources, more aircraft to put out fires, more early warning systems, more staff, better equipment. So that's all well and good. But it's basically like saying you have better hospitals. It's better to avoid illness in the first place. So we need to make sure also that we make the landscape less flammable than it is.

28:04Edwina Currie:And at the moment, we're doing the opposite, especially in the Mediterranean. And that is related to rural depopulation. The less the landscape is managed with grazing, cutting wood, agriculture, the more likely it is that the landscape is growing over with very flammable vegetation. This is exactly what is happening in the Mediterranean, but also in some areas of the UK. And then the third issue is basically human behaviour, because many fires are caused by humans, by accidents, sometimes by arson. So this is something we can reduce, but we will never be able to eliminate. And also for individuals to be aware of fires.

28:39Edwina Currie:What do I do when there is a fire? Where do I evacuate? And this is exactly the issue where, very sadly, death often occur during evacuation. When you're trying to get away from the fire, you might be taking the wrong route or you might just be too late and the flames catch up with you. To what extent are we investing sufficiently in public communication, public information about the risk of wildfire, about the risk not of arson but of ignorance or a casual attitude to, you know, campfires we don't extinguish properly, lit cigarettes which we allow to fall from our grasp or fall from our car as we're driving around in an area that is dry and arid.

29:21Edwina Currie:Yeah, I mean, basically a lot can still be done in terms of informing the public about the risk. In Spain in particular, communication tends to be actually very good, but there's still a lot that can be done. Here in the UK, if we take this as an example right now, the wildfire risk is actually very high in some of the areas, especially here in South Wales where I am. And still we see quite a lot of ignitions that could be from campfires. There could be barbecues. There could be, as you say, a cigarette. But, of course, cigarettes are actually less common of an issue than is often believed. It's often other things.

29:56Edwina Currie:Machinery, sparks for machinery. Agricultural machinery, when they cause sparks, especially in soils that have flints that can generate a fire, for example, a hot exhaust pipe from a motorbike. There are plenty of reasons a fire can ignite. And yes, absolutely, there's a lot we can do. But it's not just the human behavior in terms of reducing the ignition. It's also reducing the flammability of the vegetation. So in my garden, for example, is there a lot of brown grass? It's easy to cut their grass. Or do I really need plants like some conifers that burn really well in my garden? Should I not have other plants that are less flammable?

30:31Edwina Currie:It could be a winter day where you have a barbecue and you can still have fires ignited quite easily if the grass is dry enough. February and March are, for example, our peak fire seasons, especially in the West and in Scotland. Yeah, I was going to ask you just finally, Stefan, how does this summer look, particularly in some of those high-risk areas like South Wales, the Scottish Highlands, the southwest of England and places like Exmoor and Dartmoor and Bodmin? Yeah, all those places are actually at quite high risk at the moment. We enter another very hot period and now we actually have lower humidity levels than we had in the heat wave in May.

31:10Edwina Currie:And so, for example, right now we have a situation where if we move towards the weekend, We have temperatures above 30 degrees. We have a relative humidity that's falling in some places, or likely to fall at least, below 30%. And we also have wind speeds up to 30 kilometers an hour, sometimes exceeding 30 kilometers an hour. This is a threshold at the 30-30-30 rule, beyond which once that's basically crossed, we can get much more severe fire behavior. And this is, to me at least, the first time I've seen this in the UK occurring. So actually right now we're looking at very, very problematic conditions.

31:47Edwina Currie:That's Professor Stefan Dour. It is approaching 22 minutes to 11. You're listening to The World Tonight. The main headline so far, police in Devon have arrested and are questioning a 26-year-old man on suspicion of killing the former Conservative MP Anne Widdecombe. She was found dead at her home in Dartmoor on Thursday. The authorities in southern Spain say they are working around the clock to identify the bodies of 12 people who've died in wildfires. The victims are thought to include at least four from the UK. And the death's been announced to Patricia Green, who played the Archers' matriarch, Jill.

32:20Edwina Currie:She was the longest-serving cast member, joining the programme in 1957 and still recording contributions from her care home where she lived. Paddy, as she was known, was 95. When she spoke to Woman's Hour, Jane Garvey played her an extract from The Archers from 1959.

32:35Iain Dale:I'll let you know when I'm getting claustrophobia. Don't forget, I spent years travelling around from one place to another the one thing I always dreamt of was a husband a home and a family of my very own well now I've got everything I wanted I can't believe it's the same actress it must be somebody else certainly wasn't me were you well what's your where does that voice come from that very I can't imagine it sounds a bit like Vivian Lee well she was a great actress yes she was she didn't do much in the arches she was no she was no use in Ambridge at all it's very fifties or Was that simply the way that people...

33:12Iain Dale:That was how we were in those days. That's how we spoke. And, I mean, everybody got dressed up. I can remember going to work in a hat and gloves, for goodness sake.

33:25Edwina Currie:Paddy Green talking to Jane Garvey. Now, as we head into the weekend, how could we not mention tomorrow night's match as England take on Norway for a place in the World Cup semifinals? It's Saxon against Viking, as countless online memes have depicted it. On last night's programme, and we heard from the man who initiated the now famous rowing chant of the Norwegian fans. So what can England fans offer in response? How about a new operatic version of English football's anthem Three Lions? Joining me are Rick Blaskey, who produced the original Three Lions for the Football Association and this new rendition, and the classical tenor Harry Kersley, who performs it.

33:59Edwina Currie:Rick and Harry, welcome to you both. Rick, first of all, Three Lions dates from a time when the England men's team was in a bit of a doldrums, doesn't it? Was that part of your inspiration for trying to do something about that? Hi, yeah, absolutely. You nailed it. That was the brief from the FA, or in fact, it was my brief to the FA, was we're not going to win this thing. It was Euro 96. We were never going to win it, so let's give the country the feel-good factor. And we'd sort of done a rehearsal with the RFU with Swing Low. We'd sort of stolen Swing Low from the fans and sanitised it and made it into the anthem for the Rugby World Cup.

34:32Edwina Currie:And it was, I remember saying to the FA, hey, aren't you jealous that Little Old Rugby has a national anthem? But then, you know, the genius, you just hope, you hope that, you know, you set the bar high. And it takes genius to come up with a song like this and Frank Skinner, David Baddiel and Ian Brody. It was just an honour, a pleasure, but I cannot tell you it was easy. There's another programme in this to show you, to tell you how it nearly all went wrong. So how did the idea emerge for turning into opera? I mean I think the song is so you know there are songs that have lasted for 40 years like this one I don't know any other song that has two choruses I also, I mean there are very few songs that are so honest and so truthful and that's Frank Skinner and David Baddiel Ian Brody has written a song with two choruses, you have to glorify that, you know I hate the idea that it'll get lost in the annals of time and whilst their version will always be the version I hope we're paying homage, I think Since Pavarotti, we've always known big voices, crowds, emotion, passion.

35:41Edwina Currie:I've worked with Harry. I know how big the voice is. I thought, you know what, let's give it a go. Harry Kersley, there is an opera connection. Of course, everyone will think of Puccini's Nessun Dorma. Why do you think that's become so ubiquitous at stadiums? Well, I think it's also because Pavarotti's voice was like none other. but also it's such a pure emotion through his sound and it connects with so many people. You know, people assume opera is this upper class thing to be into but it's actually, it was a music of the people in Italy and, you know, I think if we can use, sort of bring that element back into sport and hopefully get more people connected with opera, that'd be great.

36:27Edwina Currie:Rick, my childhood is scarred with the memory of cheesy football songs with players of clubs or the national team looking deeply uncomfortable as they sang along out of tune. Are sporting organisations, not just football, now taking this much more seriously? I mean, I think everything evolves. And, you know, I've been doing this for about 20 or 30 years. And I think we've got, you sort of have to hit the zeitgeist. You have to, you know, in those days, the swaying sweaters, as we knew them, you know, it was pop music at its cutest and sweetest and most sort of throw awayable. Now we need something that has real emotion and real passion.

37:03Edwina Currie:and you know I the next my my dream is to do this for women's football because if ever there was an opportunity uh to do what we've done to bring the public together to bring crowds together to bring audiences together um with the three lines has managed to do and sweet Caroline does but wouldn't it be great if the women which is a completely different dynamic um the lionesses and women supporting women it's much more inclusive and I'd love to think I think music is just this incredibly powerful thing that brings people together. Harry, what's it like to sing Three Lights? It's actually very, well, you'll hear it's very dramatic, actually.

37:43Edwina Currie:It's a lot of quite declamatory singing, which is great and good fun to sing. And, yeah, it's like nothing I've sung before, in a good way. Just briefly, Rick, you're wearing an Sheffield Ours t-shirt. Tell us why. Sheffield Wednesday, of course. Well, first football club in the world was Sheffield Football Club. The rules of association football were written and signed in Sheffield. I'm a Wednesday fanatic. If you come from Sheffield, it's in your blood, and the England band is the Wednesday band. And that's The World Tonight. From me, Sean Lay, and all of us on the programme, have a good weekend.

38:18Edwina Currie:We'll leave you with the music from the operatic version of Three Lions. Our thanks to Rick and also to Harry Kersley, who sings us to our supper. Good night.

38:52Edwina Currie:It's coming home. It's coming, football's coming home.

39:13Edwina Currie:Football's coming home.

39:23Edwina Currie:Harry Kersley performing live and bringing the world tonight to a close. Studio direction was by Joe McCartney and the editor was Matthew Symington. He's widely recognised as one of the greatest footballers in history. He's won the prestigious Ballon d 'Or award five times. He's the all-time leading goal scorer in professional football. And according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he's the first active footballer in history to achieve billionaire status. Guess who we're talking about yet? That's right. Good Bad Billionaire is exploring the life and fortune of football icon Cristiano Ronaldo.

39:58Edwina Currie:That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.