In Conversation with Alan Yentob - Season 1

At the BFI Imax, in the context of a TV festival leading up to the centennial of the BBC and before a sell-out audience, Alan Yentob engages Stephen Fry - writer, presenter, comedian, actor - in a wide-ranging discussion of the deeply personal challenges he has faced, and the professional achievements he has enjoyed, in his extraordinary life so far, from his jail time as a teenager convicted of credit card theft to his four-decade relationship with the BBC.

Fry reflects on his high-achieving Jewish family roots, his love of language, his life-changing times at Cambridge University, discovering the work of Oscar Wilde, the realisation he was gay, the extraordinary thrill of falling in love, and the mental health challenges he has bravely and publicly confronted.

Some of the TV highlights of his career are screened and discussed, including a comedy classic with Hugh Laurie and Rowan Atkinson.

At BFI Southbank, in the context of a TV festival leading up to the centennial of the BBC, Alan Yentob engages Bob Geldof in a wide-ranging discussion of the personal, musical, technological and political events that comprise the backstory of a defining moment in BBC history – the global TV event created by the Live Aid Concert of 1985.

Galvanised by a BBC News report by Michael Buerk, which focused on a humanitarian crisis of ‘biblical proportions' as millions starved in Ethiopia, Geldof reveals new details about how luck, serendipity and ferocious willpower coalesced and uniquely brought together for a common cause many of the world's most acclaimed musicians.

From his awestruck encounters with the likes of Quincy Jones, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen and many other cultural titans, to lunch with presidents and meetings with the heads of spy agencies, Geldof reveals how a network of global satellites, from broadcasters, industry and governments, were enlisted in the cause of one of the most widely watched events in human history.