Our speaker for the next meeting is Bharat Patel with ‘You Couldn't Make It Up: the secret life of a TV reporter’ 

Award-winning reporter Bharat Patel has covered major stories both here and abroad.  He was one of the first Asian reporters on British radio and TV. His family left India for Zambia and then migrated to England. By the age of eight, he had lived on three continents and arrived in Leicester armed with just a few words of English.  He has worked for BBC Radio Leicester, Radio 4, ITV and BBC TV. He has covered major events which have made headlines around the world, including the Kegworth air crash, the death of Princess Diana, the capture of Colin Pitchfork using DNA fingerprinting for the first time, the Gujarat earthquake and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

But there's one story he has never covered and that is his own. His family left a comfortable lifestyle in both India and Zambia after a soothsayer told his parents his future lay in England. They exchanged a comfortable lifestyle in a warm climate for a tiny, terraced house with an outside toilet and a leaking roof in a rundown suburb. Their arrival was followed by a series of bizarre and comic incidents, which were often odder than anything Bharat encountered as a reporter. These are now the subject of a highly entertaining book, Indian Takeaway, which has been turned into an audiobook on BBC Sounds. All proceeds from the book go to the Hope Against Cancer charity, which has already found several cures for cancers through the research it funds.

Bharat will be signing copies of his book after his talk. If you think you might buy a copy, you need to bring cash.  All the money raised including his fee on the day will go to Hope Cancer Research.

Join us on 18th August , 10.30 for 11am at Castle Tennis Club.