Lives Less Ordinary

Filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman railed against Hollywood his whole career as the founder of cult B-movie production house, Troma, while his daughter Lily-Hayes dreamt only of fitting in.
Lloyd Kaufman has been the father of anti-establishment filmmaking for over 50 years. His production company Troma Entertainment is known for its gory, controversial and politically-charged movies. His daughter Lily-Hayes grew up on the sets of these bizarre and often quite gruesome Troma films, such as Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. She had her first on-screen role at the age of 4 in one of Troma’s biggest hits – the 1984 horror-comedy The Toxic Avenger – a film about a nerd who turns into a mutant superhero after falling into a vat of nuclear waste. But the chaos of the films was not mirrored at home in New York; Lily-Hayes and her sisters went to an Upper East Side all-girls private school, sweets were strictly rationed, and life was kept in order.
When it came time for Lily-Hayes to pick her own career path, she wanted to push back against her father's anti-establishment line of work. But how could she rebel against the ultimate rebel? Well, she went into investment banking and forged a ‘normal’ life on the trading floor. One day she witnessed a colleague take part in a chicken nugget eating contest. It was a sight that would rival even the grossest scenes she’d witnessed on a Troma set and it pushed her back towards the call of the Tromaverse.
Presenter: Asya Fouks
Producer: Andrea Rangecroft
Lives Less Ordinary is a podcast from the BBC World Service that brings you the most incredible true stories from around the world. Each episode a guest shares their most dramatic, moving, personal story. Listen for unbelievable twists, mysteries uncovered, and inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.
 
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M People star Andrew Lovell’s home life hid a terrible – yet beautiful – secret. It would take him decades to find out the truth.
At the height of his fame, drummer Andrew ‘Shovell’ Lovell had everything he’d dreamed of: sex, drugs and regular appearances at the top of the charts with the dance music band M People. But sell-out shows, first-class travel and five-star hotels couldn’t stop the questions gnawing away at him. As a mixed-race kid growing up in a white family in south London he wanted to know: who were his birth parents? Why had they given him up? The answer, when it came, was shocking.
A disruptive and unruly child, Andrew was asked to leave school aged 15. He found a trade as a plumber but his true passion was music. He joined M People in the early 90s and by 1995 he was touring the world. The band was celebrating its second platinum-selling album in 1998 when Andrew sat down for a heart to heart with his adoptive parents on Christmas Day. He was 33 at the time, and a star – M People was one of the most successful dance music acts in the world with hits like Search for the Hero and Moving On Up. But deep down Andrew was still a little boy with a big question – to which he was about to get a devastating answer. The revelation of who his real mother was left him reeling and plunged him into a breakdown.
If you are suffering distress and need support, there are details of help available in many countries at www.befrienders.org
Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producer: Hetal Bapodra
Lives Less Ordinary is a podcast from the BBC World Service that brings you the most incredible true stories from around the world. Each episode a guest shares their most dramatic, moving, personal story. Listen for unbelievable twists, mysteries uncovered, and inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to [email protected] or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
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While Francois Pierron was homeless in London he taught himself to play a public piano at St Pancras train station – from scratch. His mastery of music helped change his future.
Francois had a difficult start in life. He was abandoned as a newborn on the streets of Dakar, Senegal, shortly after his birth in 1994, but was found by police and taken to an orphanage. He was soon adopted by a French couple and grew up in a rural area near Calais in northern France. It was a happy childhood, but Francois says he struggled with issues of identity in the largely white community, and always felt he was looking for something beyond himself.
He was still a teenager when he started travelling around Europe, eventually arriving in London where he was almost immediately targeted by thieves who took his passport and all his money. This triggered a spiral into homelessness that spanned five long years. Francois spent a lot of this time in the crowds at train stations, one of the few places he felt safe, and one day came across a public piano in St Pancras station – the kind that is put in the concourse for anyone to play. He'd never touched a piano before, but says that something drew him to it with an almost magnetic force. He started teaching himself to play, spending hours every day experimenting with sounds and chords. He was obsessed. The piano provided solace, and even distracted him from his perpetual hunger.
Despite not having any lessons he developed an extraordinary skill, creating his own compositions that wowed the crowds at the station. His playing drew the attention of local media, and in 2024 he was invited to take part in the popular UK TV show The Piano, a competition in which amateur musicians perform publicly on street pianos in the concourses of major UK railway stations, all the while being secretly judged by famous musicians including Mika and Jon Batiste.
Francois says that his experience with the piano has helped him heal. He has been able to move on from homelessness, is in training for a career in system architecture, and has even started a family of his own – he hopes to share his love of the piano with his baby twins one day. He has also been back to visit Senegal, to begin the search for his birth parents.
Presenter: Mobeen Azhar
Producers: Rebecca Vincent and Rachel Oakes
Lives Less Ordinary is a podcast from the BBC World Service that brings you the most incredible true stories from around the world. Each episode a guest shares their most dramatic, moving, personal story. Listen for unbelievable twists, mysteries uncovered, and inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to [email protected] or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
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Maggie Robin raised a bear cub who grew into an extraordinary companion.
When Maggie Robin and her wrestler husband Andy brought home a bear cub in 1970s Scotland, their friends thought they were mad. But the couple raised him as one of the family. Named Hercules, the tiny cub grew into a towering but gentle bear who slept by the fire, played in the garden and travelled everywhere with them. Attitudes towards keeping wild animals have changed since then, but at the time, Hercules was something of a celebrity and even appeared on film, on chat shows across the world, and met the then Prime Minister. To Maggie though, ‘Herc’ was simply family. Then one day, while filming in the Highlands, Hercules slipped his leash and vanished into the wild, sparking a nationwide search.
 Archive clips came from Hercules The Bear, A Love Story courtesy of Friel Kean Films.
Presenter: Mobeen Azhar
Producer: Edgar Maddicott
Lives Less Ordinary is a podcast from the BBC World Service that brings you the most incredible true stories from around the world. Each episode a guest shares their most dramatic, moving, personal story. Listen for unbelievable twists, mysteries uncovered, and inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to [email protected] or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

While filming in rebel-held Syria, Loubna Mrie is falsely accused of being a spy – an accusation that spirals into a life-threatening ordeal, triggering the deepest loss of her life.
In 2011, Loubna Mrie broke from her loyalist family to join Syria’s underground network of activists. She used her Alawite identity – the same minority sect as the ruling Assads – to move through checkpoints and secretly film anti-government protests, even as it put her in conflict with her powerful father and the regime that had shaped her childhood.
But Loubna’s Alawite background made her a target for both sides. While filming in a rebel-held village, a local commander falsely accused her of being “an Alawite spy” and planned to execute her. Rescued at the last moment by a fellow activist, Loubna fled Syria – uploading a video declaring her support for the uprising before crossing into Turkey. What followed was a shattering personal loss.
From exile, Loubna struggled with grief, guilt and addiction. She lost friends and a partner to the war, survived alone in a new country, and eventually entered rehab – where she learned that Bashar al-Assad had finally fallen from power in Syria. For Loubna, the news was not a triumph but a painful reckoning: the end had come far too late for so many she loved. Loubna’s written a book called Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria.
Loubna shares her story over two episodes. In the previous episode, she described her journey from a loyalist upbringing to becoming one of the unlikely young revolutionaries who documented Syria’s civil war. In part two, the same identity that once protected her puts her in danger.
Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producer: Maryam Maruf
Editor: Munazza Khan
Lives Less Ordinary is a podcast from the BBC World Service that brings you the most incredible true stories from around the world. Each episode a guest shares their most dramatic, moving, personal story. Listen for unbelievable twists, mysteries uncovered, and inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to [email protected] or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice