Thank You

BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live, the network’s flagship Saturday morning programme, has been on the air since 2006 and is hugely popular, with 1.8 million weekly listeners. Since 2013 it has featured a slot called ‘Thank You’, for which members of the public phone in to thank people for kind acts they have done for them in the past – sometimes decades and decades ago – and who they didn’t get a chance to thank at the time. It’s a lovely, heartwarming slot and regularly brings listeners to tears.

Stories range from the walker whose vitality was restored by a generous gift of emergency chocolate, to the person who thanked every driver who stopped on the M6 motorway to collect her clothes up after a suitcase/roofrack malfunction – though she was a bit embarrassed that the clothes weren’t clean! There’s the lady who was rescued from a lake 60 years ago and never knew who her rescuer was, and the man who was so grateful when a cab driver waived the fare as he took home his new-born baby.

This uplifting, dip-in-and-outable book gathers together the very best of the Thank You stories. It’s the perfect antidote for a cold, miserable winter day – read it and you’ll see the very best of human nature.