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Judi Herman
Sunday Morning Arts

judi@shalomradio.co.uk

Judi Herman is a freelance writer, broadcaster and producer, working mainly for BBC Radio World Service and the BBC’s main UK speech network, Radio 4.

She specialises in making radio features on arts and entertainment, religion, education, travel and human-interest stories. Among programmes to which she contributes regularly are the World Service arts and entertainment magazine, The Ticket, the World Service Heart and Soul Series and Radio 4’s flagship magazine programme, Woman’s Hour.

Judi also writes regular theatre reviews for the influential UK theatre website www.whatsonstage.com and is the UK reviewer for the international theatre website www.jewish-theatre.com.

Judi has written several stage shows, including How the West End Was Won, a show celebrating Jewish life in the West End of London, commissioned to accompany the London Jewish Museum's exhibition Living Up West; and Stones of Kolin, a play with music, charting six hundred years of Jewish life in a small Czech town, performed in both London and Kolin in the Czech Republic.

She has also worked in Public Relations, including theatre PR, so she reckons she knows the theatre business from more sides than most! Judi lives near London with Steve, her husband of thirty years. They have a son and a daughter in their early twenties – and the family is completed by a Bedlington Terrier puppy called Bertie!

Hobbies
Walking canal towpaths (with the dog) cycling (also with the dog!), travelling, folk music, dancing at ceilidhs, music hall, Sondheim and all the amazing writers and composers that preceded him, collecting theatrical and carnival costumes – I have at least thirty feather boas

Likes and dislikes
More like loves and hates – love Flowers with a scent (getting rarer sadly); Italy for its style and its language that sounds like a luscious song even if it’s only the football results or traffic news…; New Zealand – the most beautiful calm ‘young’ place I’ve seen for years… and I hate four-wheel drive cars that hoot me when I’m walking/cycling with the dog – and even more the deafening racket of leaf-blowers and hedge strimmers – what happened to good old-fashioned garden shears and brooms?

Favourite football team
Arsenal – runs in my family and my husband’s – ‘marrying out’ would have been marrying a Spurs fan…

Childhood ambition
To be Judi Dench instead of Herman – oh well, never mind…

Biggest influence
Stephen Sondheim, W.S. Gilbert for rhyme … and for reason, for the last 30 plus years – Steve, my husband (is the response to that aah! (how sweet is that!) or ugh! (how nauseating is that!)?

Most like to interview
Judi Dench perhaps?!

Favourite websites
www.whatsonstage.com - not because I write for it, but because it’s so very up-to-date with reviews and news and if you buy theatre tickets without checking their special offers first, you’ve only yourself to blame if you pay more than you needed to… www.jewish-theatre - again not because I write for it - is wonderful too for news and views on Jewish theatre from all around the world

Favourite movie
Tom Jones – the acting, the period feel, the cossies – and especially the ‘naughty’ scenes

Favourite book
Stella Gibbon’s ‘Cold Comfort Farm – makes me laugh every time I read it for its clever wit and its cast of extraordinary characters

Favourite food
Jerusalem Artichokes, latkas, fish balls with eye-watering lashings of creamed horseradish (not chrane) – and yes, possible all on the same plate…

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