Woman's Hour - 24/06/2009

Woman's Hour with Jenni Murray. Including: Legal alternatives to cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines are readily available online. They can be bought by anyone with an email address and a PayPal account. Their nicknames, such as 'Coma in a bottle,' give an indication of just how dangerous they can be. Jenni is joined by Maryon Stewart, whose teenage daughter Hester died after taking the so-called 'party drug' GBL, an industrial solvent mixed with alcohol. Also joining Jenni is Howard Parker, Professor Emeritus at Manchester University, an expert in the field of legal and illegal drugs. Elizabeth Inchbald was an actress, a novelist, and one of the most successful playwrights of the 18th century. In a writing career that spanned 30 years, 19 of her comedies and farces were performed on the London stage. Her one overtly political work, The Massacre, written in 1792, was withdrawn on the advice of William Godwin for fear it would prove too controversial. As the play gets its UK premiere at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, Jenni discusses the playwright's life and legacy. In the UK we throw away 6.7 million tonnes of food every year, roughly a third of everything we buy according to figures from WRAP, the government's waste watchdog. At the same time, the number of cases of listeria, a highly dangerous form of food poisoning, has doubled in people over 60 in the past nine years. In both cases, one of the main culprits is confusion over food labelling. So what is being done to help us understand what food is and isn't safe to eat? And how do we sort out food wastage with so much confusion about? Jenni is joined by Julia Falcon and microbiologist Dr Barbara Lund, from the Institute of Food Research. And following the item on male friendship, we hear from listeners about their views on the subject.