This week the subject of the discussion was Barbara Castle - it's here on iplayer - and for someone with more than a passing interest in politics it was fascinating.
I have always had something of a soft spot for Barbara Castle. As a very young police officer standing guard outside the Labour Party Conference in Brighton I met her briefly.
This was before the Grand Hotel Bomb, so the security round party conferences was considerably more relaxed than the guns, compounds and secure zones you have now. Indeed the main policing effort was not really about protecting the conference; rather it was policing the various large demonstrations the conferences attracted.
Barbara Castle was by now a member of the European Parliament, and to me anyway had a rather fearsome reputation.
She came up to me and asked for directions to a local restaurant, and then spent 5 minutes chatting with me and a colleague, thanking us for the work we were doing and asking us about our jobs. She could not have been nicer or more gracious.
The Great Lives programme reminded me of Barbara Castle's successes - equal pay for women, the breathalyser, seat belts, motorway speed limits - which were all introduced against often sexist opposition. It was always pointed out by those opposed to the breathalyser that she was a woman who did not drive. Now it is almost impossible to believe that such things did not exist.
Her one great failure though was what struck me - and prompted me to think about what might have been.
It was already clear under the Wilson Government of the 1960's that the British trade unions had got out of control. The film 'I'm Alright Jack' and the sitcom The Rag Trade - with its catchphrase 'Everyone Out' - were less comedies and more like documentaries.
Barbara Castle tried to change this with 'In Place of Strife', a trade union reform bill containing what would now be considered uncontroversial provisions to introduce ballots before strikes could be called and 'cooling down' periods to encourage negotiations.
In the face of determined opposition from the trade unions, and the treachery of Jim Callaghan, Barbara Castle failed to get her changes through. Instead Harold Wilson caved in and agreed 'solemn and binding' agreement with the TUC that the trade unions completely ignored. With each new walk out dear old Solomon Binding found his name taken in vain on a weekly basis.
After another ten years of strikes resulting in Britain becoming the 'Sick Man of Europe' it fell to Mrs Thatcher to successfully introduce trade union reforms and restore sanity to the work place.
You can never be sure of the answer when playing 'what if' about history but I am certain Barbara Castle was right with In Place of Strife. If she had succeeded then it is surely conceivable that the winter of discontent would not have happened, and the result of the 1979 election would have been very different.
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