Mark Glanville is nothing if not eclectic. There cannot be many who have sung a Yiddish song cycle at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC and written a first-hand account of what it was like to be a football hooligan with Manchester United’s notorious Cockney reds.

Michael Chabon was brought up in a place called Columbia, Maryland. It was what was known in America as a planned community — a 1970s concept of a racially integrated, egalitarian, ecumenical community.

Yom Kippur is always a big deal for money-saving guru Martin Lewis, but this year it will be even more so. While he is at synagogue, fasting and generally attempting to ignore the outside world, his new prime-time show will be debuting on ITV.

Every weekend, a bunch of people get together in their free-time to fly in helicopters around the country. Tony Bleetman is one of them and he loves it. “You couldn’t pay to have that much fun,” he says.

Great business ideas can come to people in a number of different ways. Sarah Balfour had hers when she was playing the piano for Hugh Grant.

Things have changed dramatically in South Africa over the past couple of decades. Ivor Ichikowitz discovered just how much a few years ago when his son asked him for help with a school project. “He said to me: ‘Dad, we’re learning about apartheid at school; can you explain it to me’. My first reaction was anger.

Ben Cross has around 90 hours of DVDs of all his film performances. So over the years it has irked him a little that he is still primarily known for just one — the first he ever made, Chariots of Fire.

When Amy Winehouse was found dead in her bed on July 23 last year, the rumours started immediately. Some believed that she had committed suicide, others that she had died of a massive drugs overdose. It was said that she was depressed and that her life was in a mess.

When something big happened in the 1960s, you could be pretty sure that Barry Fantoni would not be far away.

If anyone is able to understand what is going through the head of released hostage Gilad Shilat, that man is Amos Levitov.

He was a prisoner of war in Egypt from 1970 until his release after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Levitov now lectures about the psychological consequences his own captivity had for him and he is one of the team helping Shalit to re-adjust to life as a free man in Israel.