Pick of the podcasts

Finding Natasha

Apple, Google, Spotify

For nearly 50 years, Debbie Gayle has kept a photo of a teenage girl called Natasha by her bed. Rarely a day goes by when she doesn’t think of Natasha and what became of her, because Natasha saved Debbie’s life.

In 1974, with the Cold War ongoing, British ballerina Debbie was spotted by visiting Russians and recommended for a scholarship with arguably the greatest ballet company in the world, the Kirov (now Mariinsky). She would be the first westerner to dance with the group.

All Debbie wanted to do was be the best to make her dad proud, but when she won the scholarship, he broke down in tears. Her dad was a Jew from Hungary, a survivor of the Holocaust who had watched much of his family wiped out. His brother had died on the Russian Front after being made to fight on behalf of the Russians, but Debbie had no idea because he never spoke of that period in his life.

With that upset as a backdrop, Debbie travelled east but things didn’t go to plan. with a repeated number of high-profile Russian ballet dancers defecting, Debbie was ignored, shunned and feared as a foreigner. Three months in, miserable, isolated and severely underweight, she became seriously ill after drinking contaminated water and was taken to an isolation ward and left to die. She would have, had it not been for Natasha, an 18-year-old girl who snuck her out of the ward and then simply disappeared.

Ever since, Debbie worried about the consequences and wondered what became of Natasha. Despite searching, she never found her. Now, Debbie’s journalist son and podcast founder, Jack Warren, sets out to discover what happened to Natasha. this podcast, launching soon, is the story of his attempt.