Helen Pidd

Manchester

Northern England Editor at The Guardian

Presenter of Today in Focus, the Guardian's award winning daily podcast. Former North of England editor. Contact me in confidence via [email protected]

Articles

Arise, Sir David Beckham - Full Story podcast

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Zoe Williams |Ivor Manley |Sami Kent

On Friday it was announced that David Beckham was to receive his knighthood – the fruits of a campaign for the honour that started more than a decade ago. So why now? And what does it say about the UK’s honours system – and its class system – that it took so long?
Arise, Sir David Beckham - podcast

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Zoe Williams |Ivor Manley |Sami Kent

“England trail by two goals to one. Beckham could raise the roof here with a goal,” goes the commentary, as David Beckham lines up a free-kick against Greece, shortly before whipping it into the top corner. “I don’t believe it! David Beckham scores the goal to take England all the way to the World Cup finals! Give that man a knighthood!”The year was 2001, and the ultimate honour seemed close for England’s biggest football player – and perhaps the most famous living Briton, full stop.
NHS, houses, nuclear submarines: Labour sets out its spending plans - podcast

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Heather Stewart |Lucy Hough |Ivor Manley |Joel Cox |Sami Kent

The last few weeks have proved difficult for Rachel Reeves. In public, the news has been dominated by Labour’s U-turn on the winter fuel allowance. In private, the Treasury has been caught up in wrangle after wrangle with ministers, all negotiating what their departments would receive in the spending review. Reeves’ speech to parliament on Wednesday announcing the review was a chance to tell a more positive story – particularly for a government accused of lacking direction and ambition.
Keir Starmer needs you: Britain readies for war - podcast

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Richard Norton-Taylor |Alex Atack |Rudi Zygadlo |Sami Kent |Elizabeth Cassin

On Monday, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, told Britain it was facing threats that were “more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the cold war”. It was time, he said, to make Britain a “battle-ready, armour-clad nation”. As the government publishes its strategic defence review, the former Guardian security editor Richard Norton-Taylor tells Helen Pidd there are still serious questions over whether Britain is ready for this new era.
Making America pregnant again: the pro-natalist movement - podcast

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Moira Donegan |Ruth Abrahams |Alex Atack |Tony Onuchukwu |Elizabeth Cassin

Why is pro-natalism – the idea that society should focus on producing children – a growing movement in the US? The Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan tells Helen Pidd: “This is not something that average people in the US are crying out for. People are having the number of children that they desire and think that they can support, right?
What happened to body positivity? - podcast

4 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Jenny Stevens |Kate McCusker |Ivor Manley |Elizabeth Cassin

“There’s lots of chat at the moment about #SkinnyTok,” Jenny Stevens, the Guardian’s deputy features editor, tells Helen Pidd. “The TikTok influencers, TikTok users, who are documenting their extreme weight-loss journeys. “I’ve looked through that hashtag and I think, wow, some of these people are really, really unwell.
On trial for having an abortion - podcast

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Hannah Al-Othman |Hattie Moir |Ivor Manley |Sami Kent

In November 2020, in the middle of a national lockdown, Nicola Packer found out she was pregnant. It was a shock, she tells the Guardian’s north of England correspondent, Hannah Al-Othman. Nicola hadn’t really thought she was pregnant, didn’t even believe she could conceive and had never wanted children anyway. After a call to the UK’s largest abortion provider, she was sent pills to terminate her pregnancy. They believed, she was told, she was about six weeks pregnant.
A horrifying end to Liverpool’s parade: Today in Focus Extra - podcast

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Andy Hunter |Alex Atack |Eli Block |Elizabeth Cassin

“I was just coming towards the end of writing what was a positive, upbeat overview of the whole day,” Andy Hunter, a Guardian football correspondent based in Liverpool, tells Helen Pidd. “Wrote about how they were memories that would last a lifetime. And then just as I was finishing that and about to send it, I got a call from the desk to say, have you seen what’s just happened?
The Olympics’ dirtiest race ever? - podcast

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Esther Addley |Alex Atack |Tony Onuchukwu |Homa Khaleeli |Elizabeth Cassin

“I felt very ready on the start line. I was like: ‘OK, this is it. This is what we’ve worked for.’”For the British Olympic athlete Lisa Dobriskey, reaching the women’s 1500m final at the London 2012 Games was a huge moment. She’d come fourth in Beijing four years earlier. This was her chance, in front of a home crowd. When the race began, Lisa remembers feeling alarmed at how slow it was because she knew at some point it was going to take off. And then it did.
Gary Younge on being pigeonholed as a black journalist - podcast

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Gary Younge |Courtney Yusuf |Rudi Zygadlo |Sami Kent

“We have people who can write about this,” the journalist Gary Younge remembers an editor once telling him about a column he had written on Bosnia. “Can you add an ethnic sensibility to this?”For Younge, being one of the few black columnists in the British press has not been easy; rather, it has been a constant struggle, he explains, to avoid being pigeonholed as a journalist only ever interested in race.