Immigrant songs: Radio 2's My Country, My Music

Five women, five very different stories of arriving in the UK, often unwillingly and always alone. How did they cope with the loneliness, the poverty, the loss of everything they once knew? What do they now think of the country that has become their adopted home? Jeremy Vine talks to them next week in a new lunchtime series on Radio 2. In My Country, My Music (produced by Chris Walsh-Heron) Vine and his five guests try to work out which country they now belong to, not through work, beliefs, hobbies or family but through the music they listen to.

By putting music centre-stage, as the focus, the heart of the conversation, some unusual perspectives and unexpected connections emerge. Prepare for some surprises. The theme tune from Chariots of Fire, for instance, almost sounds Chinese after listening to Sylvia’s favourite music from her childhood — ‘Ambush’, from Chinese opera — which recalls for her the hardships of her family who had to escape to Hong Kong during the Revolution, losing everything.

It’s also heartening to discover that of the five women only one (from Zimbabwe) is determined to return. On the contrary, most of Vine’s guests, even if at first shocked, disorientated, unhappy, now relish the diversity of life in Britain today. Their experiences, and their spirited optimism, are a refreshing antidote to all the current stories of corruption in high places and fears that the UK’s stature in the world is diminishing. Forty-five years after Enoch Powell’s threatening ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech (which Vine relives by visiting the hotel dining-room where Powell made it), we have here five stories of determination, extreme hardship and some kind of resolution to migration, emigration, immigration.