This week on Show Us Your Bits, hosts Alice Rivers Cripps and Josie Lloyd are deep in the Brighton Festival - and in the spirit of May Madness, they have brought on one of Brighton's most distinctive characters to help make sense of it all. Their guest is Jed Novick, veteran journalist, former lecturer at Brighton University and the founder of a brand new Brighton arts and culture magazine called The Beat. Jed started his career as a sports feature writer on The Times after journalism college in 1986, before landing what he calls the best job of his life at The Independent in its earliest days - where he became quietly famous for writing invented TV listings, including entirely made-up soap opera storylines that attracted boxes of letters from readers suggesting plot ideas for characters who didn't exist. He later worked at The Guardian and set up several magazines before moving into lecturing, where he taught journalism at Brighton University until the course's shift away from print made him feel, as he puts it, like a stegosaurus. Taking voluntary redundancy, he has marked the start of his new chapter by launching The Beat - a 48-page print magazine curating the best of Brighton's arts, music, food, and culture scene, starting with a festival special featuring a double-page spread on the band Angine de Poitrine and coverage of The Great Escape music festival. The Beat is available via subscription through its Instagram page @thebrightonbeat_

As for his bits, Jed is one of the most jewellery-laden guests the show has ever had, wearing more rings than fingers - each one a story. A twisted spoon ring given by a friend for his sixtieth birthday; a ring from the National Jewish Museum in Amsterdam; a huge Moroccan silver ring spanning knuckle to knuckle; a black onyx ring bought in Kathmandu during four years of travelling that began when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989; a tiger's eye ring made from two stones he quietly pocketed from his mother-in-law's broken necklace; a matching ring made by the jeweller landlady of his local pub The Eddy in West Hill for Gilly's 60th birthday and a ring he cast himself in a cuttlefish casting course at the Phoenix Art Centre in Brighton - a gift for his wife Gilly Smith (food writer and host of the Cooking The Books podcast and also a previous guest on the podcast). He also wears a leather necklace holding a single surviving batik cow-bone bead given to him by a Dean Moriarty-type figure he met in Tokyo, a keepsake from his Jack Kerouac-inspired years on the road. As for suits, Jed traces his love of tailoring straight back to punk - both, he says, are about refusing to be generic.

The episode also touches on his marriage to Gilly: the two eloped on April Fool's Day, told no one, then announced it at a party that evening. He grew up in Hackney, moved to Brighton in 1995 after the arrival of their first child, and once bought a house in the Sussex countryside purely because his wife sent him a photo of its pond.

Alice and Josie close the episode buzzing about The Beat and the Brighton Festival, with Josie heading off to a wedding at Dreamland in Margate followed by the Cannes Film Festival to promote The Bright Side Running Club.

Topics Covered

The Brighton Festival and Brighton May Madness

Artists' Open Houses in Brighton

Jed Novick's career: The Times, The Independent, The Guardian

The Beat magazine -- Brighton's new arts and culture print magazine

The Great Escape music festival and Angine de Poitrine

Inventing TV listings and soap opera storylines at The Independent

Lecturing at Brighton University

Jed's ring collection and the stories behind each one

The National Jewish Museum in Amsterdam

Travelling from Berlin to Kathmandu after the fall of the Berlin Wall

Jack Kerouac and the On the Road years

Batik bone necklace from Kenya via Tokyo

Punk fashion vs bespoke suits

Eloping on April Fool's Day

Josie heading to Cannes for The Bright Side Running Club

Season 10 of Show Us Your Bits

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Welcome to Season 10 of Show Us Your Bits -- and what a milestone it is. In this opening episode, hosts Alice Rivers Cripps and Josie Lloyd reunite after the summer break to catch up on everything that happened while they were apart, before teasing an exciting new season of guests.

Alice shares the extraordinary story of a three-day charity walk across the Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, organised to raise funds for Leo's Angels -- a charity set up by her friend Emma after the tragic death of her 11-year-old son Leo from an epileptic fit. Twenty-three female founders walked more than 60 kilometres together through the mountains, raising over £23,000. The walk was not without drama: the group survived a terrifying encounter with a massive swarm of angry bees that had been smoked out of their hive, forcing the women -- including one member with a severe bee allergy -- to silently wade through a river bed surrounded by thousands of bees for two kilometres. Alice came home buzzing with energy and renewed motivation for life and business.

Josie, meanwhile, had been travelling in Vietnam. The trip took in Ho Chi Minh City, the island of Phu Quoc, Ninh Binh's stunning inland waterways, the ghost-town tourist developments around Ha Long Bay, and the vibrant old quarter of Hanoi. Josie also did a Vietnamese cookery course, visited a Michelin-starred pho restaurant and came home via a stopover in the futuristic city of Shenzhen. Back in the UK, she celebrated her husband Emlyn's birthday with a full Beatles tourist experience in Liverpool.

On the business front, Alice has been appearing on QVC to sell her Posh Totty Designs jewellery collection and is growing increasingly comfortable in front of the cameras. Josie is heading to Cannes to promote her film The Bright Side Running Club.

The episode closes with both hosts looking ahead to a packed Season 10 guest line up, including several of the female founders from Alice's charity walk.

Topics Covered

- Leo's Angels charity and the story behind it

- The Sierra Nevada 60km charity walk for epilepsy research

- The bee swarm survival story

- Travel in Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City, Phu Quoc, Ninh Binh, Ha Long Bay, Hanoi

- Vietnamese food and the Michelin-starred pho restaurant

- Shenzhen airport and modern China

- Liverpool and the Beatles tourist trail

- Selling jewellery on QVC

- The Bright Side Running Club film at Cannes

- Preview of Season 10 guests

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Co-founder and CEO of Warners Gin Distillery, Tina Warner-Keogh started off with a mission in 2012 to save the world from mediocre gin. From a farming family, she used her gut as her guide and nature as her inspiration to diversify her husband Tom’s family farm, installing a still and growing botanicals. Tina tells the story of starting a business from scratch to pioneering the world’s first rhubarb gin. From a patriarchal family, she’s had to grow in courage and belief, steering her business through Covid and the cost of living crisis to the success it is today. Sustainability is absolutely at the heart of what she does and her mission is to the world’s leading nature-driven drinks business. She brings some china pea pods, as she’s nicknamed ‘Tina Pod’ and is very close to her Mum. She also brings some colourful ‘wings’ beaded earrings from Tanzania, which commemorate her epic climb up Kilimanjaro as well as a framed picture from her brother with a very special meaning. She says that her six minute diary helps her process her emotions and makes her focus on gratitude every day and that her dogs keep her grounded and happy. Find Warners gin in good clubs, bars and restaurants, as well as supermarkets near you.

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Our funny, down-to-earth guest this week is a PR adviser, marketing expert, author, podcaster and business coach who started out helping small businesses in the equestrian and rural space, but has picked the brains of a host of ‘rock-star’ entrepreneurs for her podcast and book, ‘You’ve Got This - How to Supercharge your business and conquer your goals’. Rhea says that even the most successful business people feel overwhelmed and lack confidence occasionally. Passionate about growing social media organically, she says the key to success is getting your face out there, but that showing up is doesn’t mean being perfect, in fact far from it. Being human and a bit rough around the edges is the key to connecting with customers. She lives in the country with her family, four sheep and a dog and says she’s not sentimental about ‘stuff’, but she shows us her diamond-studded engagement ring made out of a farrier’s nail, a Posh Totty necklace with a ‘C’ and and ‘O’ which she never takes off and links her to her twin sons and her Astrid & Miyu crystal earrings reminding her of her love of small businesses. She says her life hack is to let go of the idea of perfection and to just give it a go. Find out more on instagram @rheafreemanpr www.rheafreemanpr.co.uk

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We’re all about female empowerment this week and we’re delighted to be joined by the founder of the UK’s first eco-friendly period underwear brand. Ruby talks about how she started WUKA to provide sustainable alternatives to traditional menstrual products and to break the stigma surrounding menstruation. Growing up in Nepal, periods were never spoken about and during them, she was separated from her family and stigmatised. Moving to London when she was twenty, founding a cool brand was the last thing on her mind, but it was when she was talking to girls in schools about reusable period products and they all said they thought the idea was tacky, she had an epiphany moment, bought a second-hand sewing machine and, with the help of a YouTube video set about solving the problem herself. Starting small and perfecting the product has been key to her success, but she’s now a B-corp business and is on a mission to end period poverty, as well as tackling the issue of girls dropping out of sports at a grass roots level. A collector of things, Ruby shows us a beautiful blue sari, a sentimental Mulberry bracelet from her husband, as well as her handmade jewellery from Nepal including her gold sun pendant that reflects the incredible energy she puts out into the world. Get her products and find out more at wuka.co.uk

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We’re joined by the internationally bestselling author of Broken Country, (Amazon’s book of the year), an incredible book about a passionate love triangle in set in Dorset in the 50’s and 60’s. Clare tells us about the genesis of the book, the rocky writing process, and what it feels like to ride the wave of international success, and how readers have connected with her themes of first love and long love. She tells us about her research for the book, including learning to milk on a farm and how important the natural world has become to her and how it inspired her main character, Beth. She shows us her talisman, a bust of Peabody that was on her grandfather’s desk. She shows us the miniature cage with an acorn made by Somerset artist, Richard Howell, as well as framed print of the final poem in her book. Having had a surprise renewal of her vows with her husband in Cornwall, Clare shows us a beautiful necklace he gifted her. In an honest chat about her road to success, Clare says her life hack is to not take things too seriously and to remember to be grateful. She says that for her, walking every day in nature without a phone first thing is life-changing. Broken Country is available everywhere in all book formats. Find out more about Clare’s work www.clarelesliehall.com or on insta @clarelesliehall

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