The 66 Club

World Service, 10.05am

One of the more unusual programmes you are likely to hear this week concerns the activities of 11 American women who have one thing in common — they have all been impregnated by a man they have never met, and who remains, to them, a figure known as Donor 66. The sperm bank’s rules mean they cannot discover his identity, but no matter — the women have less interest in knowing who he is than they do in one another. They contact each other and hope to one day organise a grand reunion with all the “siblings”. Do they represent a new kind of extended family for the 21st century?

The Betrayal of Blackpool

Radio 4, 11am

Strong words, implying as they do that the grand old seaside town, playground of the working class for 150 years, was made promises that were then cruelly snatched away. But, as Martin Wainwright’s excellently balanced programme shows, there is more than one “betrayal” involved in the decline of visitor numbers only a few years ago from 17 million to 10 million and dwindling. Blackpool hoped the seeds of its regeneration lay in the granting of a licence to build the country’s first “super casino” — but was it a betrayal when the licence went to Manchester?

After all, the first casino was being viewed as a testing ground for others, and Blackpool no longer fitted the demographic. Perhaps the answer comes right at the end, when a regular holiday-maker sums up the place — “Its heyday was in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, and it hasn’t changed for 50 years.” Perhaps Blackpool is a town that betrayed itself.

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