Front Row - 10/03/2009

Presented by Mark Lawson. Before his death in August last year, diarist and playwright Simon Gray completed a dramatisation of his memoirs in collaboration with fellow writer Hugh Whitemore. Hugh talks about the challenges of bringing The Last Cigarette, Gray's dramatic monologue, to the stage. Grayson Perry has exhibited his ceramics, sculptures, prints and textiles widely for 25 years. Now he is judging other people's exhibitions as one of the judges for the 2009 Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries and has agreed to record an audio diary for Front Row. Screenwriter Tony Gilroy has returned to the director's chair with another of his own scripts: Duplicity, a sleek thriller starring Clive Owen and Julia Roberts as ex- spies out to con two rival corporations but hamstrung by their own clandestine affair. The latest example of a long broadcasting tradition - the undercover reporter - will be broadcast next week. The reporter Jonathan Maitland joins a long line of reporters from Roger Cook to Donal MacIntyre to play the incognito reporter rooting round a story without the subject's knowledge. Stephen Armstrong looks back over the highs and lows of those who have tried it.