Michel Roux senior and his brother Albert founded two of the most celebrated restaurants in Britain, Le Gavroche, the first British restaurant awarded three Michelin stars and the Waterside Inn, which in 2010 became the first restaurant outside of France to retain all three of its Michelin stars for twenty-five years. They arrived in the UK in 1967 and together they are credited with creating a culinary revolution in Britain. In 2006 Michel was diagnosed with bowel cancer and he was devastated when he temporarily lost his sense of taste and smell. ‘My life is about food. If I can’t taste, where’s my life?” But he went on to make a full recovery. He joins Jenni to talk about his travels along the length and breadth of France to research his new book, The Essence of French Cooking, and he shares his recipe for the perfect Ratatouille. 

The Essence of French Cooking by Michel Roux  is published by Quadrille

Michel will appear on BBC1 Saturday Kitchen on 27th Sept with Michael Parkinson and Mary Berry. 

UKIP has had a record year so far, they’ve got more party members that ever and they won 27.5% of the vote in the European Election. They gained 24 MEPs, and out of these, seven are women. But polling suggests that support for UKIP is generally lower among women than men. And some analysts have suggested that many of those women who chose to vote for the party for the first time this year did so as a protest vote and have yet to be persuaded to stick with them.

On the first day of their party conference, Jenni talks to Deputy Chairman Suzanne Evans about what the party has to offer to women voters at the last annual party conference before the 2015 General Election. 

Following the death of Deborah, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, an opportunity to hear an extract from an interview she did with Jenni in 2010.  The full programme is  available as part of the Woman’s Hour Collection – classic interviews from the history of the programme.

‘Prevent’ is a government strategy, originally set up in 2006 in the aftermath of the 7th July bombings, to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. More recently it has helped to develop over 180 local community-based projects, many specifically aimed at women. We hear from a grass-roots organisation in Leicester called STRIVE who work on different issues affecting the mainly Muslim women in the areas it engages with; extremism and recognising the first signs of radicalisation being one of them. Sofia Mahmood, secretary for Shanaz, an independent network for working with Muslim women as a part of Prevent, joins Jenni to talk about the importance of these workshops.