Front Row - 13/01/2009

Presented by Mark Lawson. In his latest film, The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke plays Randy 'The Ram' Robinson, a professional wrestler who enjoyed success in the 1980s, but twenty years later is struggling to accept that his career is coming to an end. Sports presenter John Inverdale has seen it and gives his verdict. The actor Hugh Bonneville, who starred in Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story and Bonekickers, stars as DSI Iain Barclay in Hunter, a two-part TV police thriller. Hugh talks to Mark about acting for the large and small screen. In 1983, the first volume of compilation album Now That's What I Call Music hit the shelves, featuring the likes of Kajagoogoo, Duran Duran and not one but two tracks from UB40. Mark Ellen, editor of the pop magazine Smash Hits in 1983 and now editor of The Word magazine, looks back at the first album, which has been re-released. Plus Mrs Beeton's biographer, Kathryn Hughes, considers the potential edibility of recipes in fiction.