You never know who you'll meet
If life is a journey, then make an effort to talk to strangers on a train, says Alexei Sayle
Ride Productions PR
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When we travel, it’s very easy to cut ourselves off from our fellow passengers, to bury ourselves in movies on our laptops or audiobooks and podcasts on our phone. But if, just for a little while on a train, say, we took time to have a conversation with somebody we don’t know, then we’re likely to hear the most amazing stories and learn something new about the world around us. This is something I’ve learnt in the roughly 150 hours I’ve spent travelling up and down the country for my Radio 4 series, Strangers on a Train.
The producers Peter Lowe and the late Nick Symonds came to me with the idea for the show: that I should board a long-distance train and ask any passengers who would talk to me where they were going and why they were going there. It’s a deceptively simple concept and I don’t think any of us knew before it first aired in 2022 that it would turn into such a powerful, unique and long-running piece of programming.
Now in its third series, many of the individual stories I’ve heard over the years have stayed with me, particularly the two women travelling from Edinburgh to Dundee, one taking the other to a hospital appointment. Their tale turns into something moving and poignant, a story of human kindness and community.
On my trip from Cardiff to Portsmouth, I met Tess, who speaks Russian and Ukrainian and has been trained to drive a tank, as well as Roshny and Sharon, on holiday from Indonesia, who’d just fulfilled a lifetime’s dream of watching Liverpool play at Anfield.
Other passengers had started noticing the smell of his kimchi
Going from Manchester to Bournemouth, I encountered Moira who, as a dedicated Manchester City fan, has sky-blue hair, sky-blue clothes and even a sky-blue house. From Hull to Liverpool, I met mother and daughter Jill and Isobel who told me how their lives have changed after they both lived through the bomb attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.
On the way from London to Blackpool I found Michael, who was on his way to a major international dance competition at the Winter Gardens Ballroom in Blackpool, with his first ever invitation to be a judge.
Taking the trip from Llandudno to Cardiff I talked to Dewi who was travelling to a retreat for help with his mental health problems and, in this latest series, while travelling from London to Hereford, I met James Read, an expert on fermentation, who was accompanied by two large buckets of Korean kimchi (fermented cabbage) and the other passengers in his carriage had started noticing the smell.
In our final episode, from London to Berwick-upon-Tweed, we got a “flooding ahead” announcement and had to turn back. You don’t get that on The Graham Norton Show!
By tuning into these conversations, Strangers on a Train does a lot of things that most UK broadcasting seldom manages – you hear a great many regional accents, still something of a rarity on mainstream media. Most importantly, ordinary people get to talk solely about what they want to talk about and I actually listen to what they’re saying!
This might sound odd but many interviewers in the news and on chat shows are not paying attention to what they’re being told but have already checked out, thinking about their next question. I’m genuinely fascinated by people’s replies, though I also make a point never to challenge them on their views. The programme isn’t an interrogation, it is (and this is a much misused phrase) literally a journey with my fellow passengers.
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People travel on trains for an amazingly diverse set of reasons. I have to say the fantastic crews I’ve encountered on these journeys also seem to have lived the most incredible lives. So maybe you should chat to them, too.
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