101 Faces - 5

Here now, 21-25
PAUL ROBESON

I have had a fascination with Robeson for many years. It is still sinister that such a huge figure should be so marginalised in history. Had he been born 100 years later (well, maybe 95, not 100, since he was born in 1898) whose role would he be fulfilling? Colin Kaepernick, Kendrick Lamar, Obama, Deray Mckesson, Samuel L Jackson, Eric Holder? Or all of them? Or would he be mainly just a great baritone singer, as he is mainly remembered.

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI

Well, it’s just funny the kind of people that people hate these days. Is this a person so worthy of vitriol from so many angles? Really? How will we look at this era? – it was an era when people from all sides of the political spectrum took against Shami Chakrabarti. Why? Because we're at the same time morally supercharged and morally defunct. So tiresome.

EMMA POOLEY

If you want an example of the bias that faces sportswomen, Emma Pooley was one of the best cyclists in the world for many years, (Olympic silver, World time-trial champion), is a multi-world champion in the duathlon, has a PhD and has been in the winning team in Celebrity University Challenge. But is still pretty unknown.

WILLIAM POOLEY

This nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and, once he’d recovered, flew back to his work there. I’m rarely struck like that, I rarely believe in the better side of human nature, but I thought, jeez, some folk are just like that, aren’t they?

HAL BLAINE

The sound of rock’n’roll is Hal Blaine drumming. Truly. That’s quite a recent revelation for me, but it’s true. Without Hal Blaine drumming, what would we have, or what would we not have? We’d not have the sound we hear on .. deep breath, because there could be 1000s … Be My Baby, Good Vibrations, Wichita Lineman, Bridge Over Troubled Water … you know what I mean? He made that sound.