Robert Elms presents the weird, wonderful, rocking, radical, psychedelic history of the Roundhouse in its 40th anniversary year, exploring its remarkable unheard archive.

The vast rotunda designed by Robert Stephenson began life as a railway turntable, and was then an all but forgotten gin warehouse, until the sixties, when playwright Arnold Wesker launched the venue as a radical arts centre.

Since Wesker's enterprise, the Roundhouse has been home to countless weird, psychedelic happenings, landmark punk & rock n roll gigs and radical theatre.

Just about every British band played there: Pink Floyd, The Who, The Rolling Stones & The Clash, who Robert Elms himself remembers jumping up and down to, as a spiky teenager, on a pogo stick.

MUSIC & FACTUAL

Broadcast on Radio 4 in June 2004