A NATIONAL radio show which attracts 1.5m listeners a week is to be recorded in a North Hertfordshire village this Friday.

BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions programme, the radio equivalent of Question Time, is to be broadcast live from Princess Helena College in Preston.

Jonathan Dimbleby will resume his normal role as chairman, with Financial Times editor Lionel Barber, thriller writer Sophie Hannah, shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg and Welsh secretary Cheryl Gillan sitting on the panel.

The programme will feature questions which the audience are invited to submit before the show, and the answers and responses from the panel.

Les Edwards, former chairman of the Preston Trust, emailed the BBC to invite them to the village.

He said: “We think this is a good thing for Preston. It’s attracted a lot of interest in the village.

“We’ve advertised in Hitchin, and allocation of tickets have gone very quickly.

“We are expecting the audience to be approaching 400 people. There has been a lot of interest from people, from parents of girls at the school.” Admission, which is free, will be between 6.45 and 7.15pm, with the live broadcast beginning at 8.05pm. Two repeats of the show will also be broadcast Saturday lunchtime, followed by phone-in Any Answers, which gives listeners a chance to join the debate.

Admission is ticket only. There are limited tickets available from the Hitchin Initiative office or The Red Lion pub in Preston.