Loose Ends is a British radio programme originally broadcast on Saturday mornings, and then transmitted early Saturday evenings from 1998 by BBC Radio 4. It was hosted by Ned Sherrin until he became ill in late 2006 with a reported throat infection, and later throat cancer. It brings together guests, generally from the world of entertainment, in a mix of interviews, sets by comedians and musical sessions.

First broadcast in 1986, it developed out of The Colour Supplement,^{[citation needed]} a Sunday morning programme which had featured early Loose Ends contributors such as Stephen Fry, Robert Elms and Victor Lewis-Smith. The latter's contributions to Loose Ends were highly regarded tape packages, marking a genuinely mischievous and disruptive element to the programme which was lost over time.^{[citation needed]}

Original commissioned comedy had, by 2006, been phased out almost entirely, with comic performers tending to deliver existing material from their repertoires although, in June/July 2006, the Scots comedian and writer Janey Godley scripted a weekly series of satiric fictional extracts from Nancy Dell'Olio's Diary to coincide with the FIFA World Cup. Dell' Olio was the girlfriend of England national football team coach Sven-Göran Eriksson. Only four extracts were transmitted due to the England team's failure in the championships.

In common conversation, the phrase loose ends usually refers to unresolved issues. Loose Ends may also refer to the following:

In music:

In other media:

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter-performer who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.

Springsteen's recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. He is widely regarded by many as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time.

Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver, although he was frequently unemployed; his surname is Dutch for jump stone. His mother, Adele Ann (née Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.

James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE (born 11 June 1959), known as Hugh Laurie (/ˈhjuː ˈlɒri/), is an English actor, voice artist, comedian, writer, musician, recording artist, and director. He first became known as one half of the Fry and Laurie double act, along with his friend and comedy partner Stephen Fry, whom he joined in the cast of Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster from 1987 to 1999.

From 2004 to 2012, he played Dr Gregory House, the protagonist of House, for which he received two Golden Globe awards, two Screen Actors Guild awards, and six Emmy nominations. As of August 2010, Laurie is the highest paid actor in a drama series on US television. He has been listed in the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor ever in a TV Drama—earning US$ 700,000 per episode in House—and for being the most watched leading man on television.

Laurie was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. The youngest of four children, Laurie has an older brother named Charles and two older sisters named Susan and Janet. He had a somewhat strained relationship with his mother, Patricia (née Laidlaw). His father, Ran Laurie, was a medical doctor who also won an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs (rowing) at the 1948 London Games.

Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.

After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.

He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.

As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.