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6. Shoot You Down Mar 16, 2026

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Barbados was supposed to save them. In early 1992, The Happy Mondays are flown to the Caribbean to record their next album. Fresh from the success of Pills ’n’ Thrills and Bellyaches, this should be consolidation. Instead, Shaun Ryder drops his methadone at Manchester airport, the studio fills with smoke rather than songs and the budget disappears pound by pound. A sun lounger is sold for drugs. Back home, the gold rush continues. James score a number two single with Sit Down and a wave of new bands flood the charts. A&Rs circle the city nightly, desperate for the next Madchester success.

But at The Hacienda, the mood has changed. Security tightens as gangs move in. Tony Wilson announces the club’s temporary closure. When it reopens, it does so under suspicion and noise complaints from new city centre flats rising around it. Meanwhile, the Stone Roses vanish into courtrooms and contracts. By 1992, Factory Records is running on fumes. The Hacienda is bleeding money. And in a final, almost absurd twist, Shaun Ryder sells the master tapes of Yes Please! for £50, a moment that tips the label into bankruptcy.

Episode 6 of The Rise and Fall of Madchester is the story of the comedown and how the movement that once felt unstoppable begins to fracture under its own weight.

A BBC Audio Production.

5. World in Motion Mar 16, 2026

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1990 does not begin quietly. London burns during the Poll Tax riots. Strangeways prison erupts in Manchester. Margaret Thatcher stands outside Downing Street for the last time. Britain is shifting politically, socially and culturally. At the very same moment, Madchester explodes into the mainstream. The Happy Mondays release Step On as smoke rises over the city. Ecstasy fuels a new chemical confidence. Indie and rave collide. What began in dark rooms is now national news.

Then comes an unlikely coronation. The Football Association asks New Order to write England’s 1990 World Cup anthem. World in Motion goes to number one and Manchester owns the summer. At Glastonbury, The Happy Mondays arrive with a thousand mates and a bootleg pass printer. In the charts, The Inspiral Carpets and The Charlatans surge forward. And in Widnes, on a former chemical works surrounded by factories and wind, tens of thousands gather for Spike Island. The Stone Roses take the stage as fireworks burst overhead. The sound system falters. The crew threaten to strike. The wind shifts…. but it barely matters.

This is the peak. The moment Madchester becomes too big to contain.

Episode 5 of The Rise and Fall of Madchester tells the story of the year politics, football, rave and pop culture collided.

A BBC Audio Production.

4. Loose Fit Mar 16, 2026

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By 1989, Manchester is no longer underground, it is now unavoidable. Baggy jeans, bucket hats and loose jumpers become a uniform. Market stalls and record shops replace boutiques and fashion houses. The look travels as fast as the music and the city has found its silhouette. The Happy Mondays record Bummed in a blur of ecstasy and mischief, then quietly redraw the indie rulebook by handing a track to a club DJ for remixing. The Stone Roses release their debut album to modest chart impact, but something else is happening beneath the numbers.

Coaches roll out of Manchester bound for Blackpool. Inside the Empress Ballroom, chandeliers shake as a crowd bounce before the band even appear. Within weeks, Madchester is on prime time television. The Late Show. Top of the Pops. Living rooms across Britain are introduced to a city no longer asking for permission.

Episode 4 of The Rise and Fall of Madchester captures the moment the movement breaks through. When fashion becomes identity, when dance becomes pilgrimage and when Manchester steps from dark rooms into the national spotlight.

Featuring archive interviews from Mani, Clint Boon, Shaun Ryder, Ian Brown, John Robb, alongside new interviews with Leo Stanley, Mike Pickering, Tim Booth from James and Steve Atherton.

A BBC Audio Production.

3. Twenty Four Hour Party People Mar 16, 2026

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In 1985 two Manchester bands release their first records on the very same day. The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays barely register beyond the city. They are promising, scruffy… and largely ignored. But elsewhere in Manchester, something far more seismic is taking shape. In community halls, tower blocks and semi-legal parties, imported house records from Chicago and Detroit begin changing the temperature in the room. A new chemical arrives and with it a new way of feeling. Strangers embrace. Dance floors dissolve old boundaries. The Haçienda, once awkward and half empty, starts to pulse.

Episode 3 of The Rise and Fall of Madchester tells the story of the moment when guitars collided with house, when ecstasy rewired a generation and when Manchester stopped documenting its decline and started losing itself in the dark.

Featuring archive interviews from Noel Gallager, Liam Gallagher, Shaun Ryder, Bez, Peter Hook, Mani, Chris Jam, and Tony Wilson alongside new interviews with Angela Matthews, Mike Pickering and Kermit.

A BBC Audio Production.

2. Movement Mar 16, 2026

Show notes

March 1983. New Order take to the stage on Top of the Pops to perform their new single, Blue Monday. The machines misfire, the sequencer slips and Bernard Sumner glances upwards as if waiting for help that never comes. On national television, it looks like chaos. Within weeks, Blue Monday becomes the biggest selling 12 inch single in British history. Inside the Haçienda, the early nights are sparse and uncertain. The building is vast, expensive and half empty. Almost nobody dances. But beyond Manchester, in the clubs of Chicago and New York, a new sound is transforming dance floors into places of collective release. That pulse begins travelling across the Atlantic, carried by DJs, white labels and restless curiosity.

As house music seeps into Hulme community centres and Moss Side blues parties before reaching the city centre, the rules begin to change. Door policies loosen. Guitars make room for groove.

Episode 2 of The Rise and Fall of Madchester charts the moment Manchester finds its rhythm. From the uneasy birth of Blue Monday to the early reinvention of the Haçienda, this is the story of how a city that had stood still began, tentatively at first, to move.

Featuring archive interviews from Bernard Sumner, Gillian Gilbert, Peter Hook, Shaun Ryder, Ian Brown and Tony Wilson alongside new interviews with Mike Pickering, Angela Matthews and Steve Atherton.

A BBC Audio Production.

1. Wilderness Mar 16, 2026

Show notes

Manchester in the late 1970s is a city in retreat. Industry is collapsing and jobs are disappearing. Whole neighbourhoods feel abandoned. Out of that stillness comes a stark, unsettling new sound. Joy Division capture the mood of a city that has lost its rhythm. Their music is tense, mechanical and unflinching. When Ian Curtis dies in May 1980, just as the band stand on the brink of America, it feels like the end of something fragile and important. A month later, Love Will Tear Us Apart is released. But this story does not end there.

Tony Wilson, television presenter and cultural instigator, has already opened a club night called The Factory. Within two years, the surviving members of Joy Division return as New Order and take a huge gamble to open a cavernous nightclub by the canal. On opening night at The Haçienda, a white grand piano sits in the middle of a vast, echoing room. Almost nobody dances.

Episode 1 of The Rise and Fall of Madchester tells the story of how a broken industrial city began to rebuild itself through sound. From the Russell Club in Hulme to the birth of Factory Records, from the stark poetry of Joy Division to the uncertain promise of the Haçienda, this is where Manchester finds a room… and the faintest hint of a new pulse.

Featuring archive interviews from Tony Wilson, Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, Ian Curtis and Stephen Morris and a new interview with Mike Pickering.

A BBC Audio Production.

8. My Way Oct 27, 2025

Show notes

In the wake of their final show, the Sex Pistols split, torn apart by addiction, betrayal, and manipulation. John Lydon returned to London, disgusted. Steve Jones and Paul Cook escaped to Rio to record with fugitive Ronnie Biggs. And Sid Vicious, already spiraling, began his final descent in New York.

This is the tragic coda to punk’s most dangerous band. From the Chelsea Hotel to Rikers Island, from a heroin-induced coma to an infamous murder charge.

The Rise and Fall of Sex Pistols ends here, in blood and handcuffs, and headlines. In this final episode, Gina Birch and Steve Lamacq reflect on the cultural earthquake the Pistols triggered, the lives they changed, and the price they paid.

Featuring archive interviews from: Nancy Spungen, Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Malcolm McLaren and Sid Vicious alongside a new interview with Jah Wobble, childhood friend of Vicious and Lydon.

Presented by Gina Birch and Steve Lamacq Written by Philip Smith, with additional writing by Steve Lamacq Produced by Angela Davies and Philip Smith Editor for BBC Audio Helen Hobday Assistant Producer for BBC Nariece Sanderson Commissioner for BBC Music Will Wilkin

A BBC Audio Production

The producers wish to thank all the contributors and archive interviewers and interviewees.

7. No Fun. Implosion in the USA. Oct 27, 2025

Show notes

By the end of 1977, the Sex Pistols sat at the top of the UK charts… while simultaneously hitting rock bottom. Sid Vicious was imploding, his partner Nancy Spungen was fuelling the chaos and Johnny Rotten was growing disillusioned with Malcolm McLaren’s toxic games.

Still, the band pushed ahead with a final run of gigs, including an unexpectedly wholesome Christmas Day show for children of striking firefighters. No one knew it then, but it would be their final UK performance for two decades.

Then came their first American tour. The Pistols were dropped into the heart of the conservative South. Sid carved into his own chest on stage and Rotten was nearly broken by paranoia. The tour descended into violence, vomit, and blood.

And to the end, in San Francisco, with the band on its knees, Johnny Rotten stared down the crowd and asked: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” With a literal mic drop, he walked off stage, signalling the end of the Sex Pistols.

Featuring archive interviews from: Nancy Spungen, Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Malcolm McLaren, Sid Vicious, Sex Pistols’ roadie Stephen 'Roadent' Conolly.

Presented by Gina Birch and Steve Lamacq

A BBC Audio Production

6. The Album, The Outrage and the Court Case Oct 27, 2025

Show notes

After the chaos of their Jubilee riverboat stunt and the media storm around God Save the Queen, the Pistols were marked men. Attacked in the streets, vilified in the press, and hated by half the country, Britain’s most notorious band were now public enemy number one.

But manager Malcolm McLaren had no intention of retreating. Amid rising paranoia, infighting, and Sid Vicious’s self-destruction, the Pistols did what no one expected: they released one of the most incendiary debut albums of all time - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.

It wasn’t just the music that caused outrage. One word on its cover dragged the band into a landmark obscenity trial that would test the limits of free

Episode 6 of The Rise and Fall of Sex Pistols is the story of the album that changed British music forever, and how the Sex Pistols took on the law, the tabloids, and the establishment… and won.

Featuring archive interviews from: Richard Branson, Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Malcolm McLaren and Sid Vicious alongside a new interview with the legendary photographer Dennis Morris and a cameo appearance from BBC 1 continuity announcer Duncan Newmarch.

Presented by Gina Birch and Steve Lamacq

A BBC Audio Production

5. Anarchy on the Thames Oct 27, 2025

Show notes

1977, and as Britain prepared to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols were plotting something else entirely. Fresh from being dropped by two major labels, they signed with Virgin Records and unleashed God Save the Queen… a blistering punk anthem that tore into the monarchy and shattered British tradition.

It was banned by the BBC, blacklisted from shops, and allegedly kept from reaching Number 1. And then, on Jubilee Day, the Pistols took to the Thames in a now-legendary riverboat stunt that ended with police raids and arrests.

Episode 5 is the story of how the Pistols hijacked Britain’s biggest party, declared war on the establishment, and created the most controversial single in UK history.

Featuring archive interviews from: Richard Branson, Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Malcolm McLaren and Sid Vicious alongside new interviews with the legendary Sex Pistols official photographer Dennis Morris and groundbreaking bass player Jah Wobble.

Presented by Gina Birch and Steve Lamacq

A BBC Audio Production

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