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William Cabaniss has been United States ambassador to Prague for less than a month, and is still clearly settling in to his new post. Nevertheless, the ambassador, who introduces himself as Bill Cabaniss, did find the time last week for a first press briefing with Czech journalists. When we spoke afterwards, I asked him if he would tell our listeners something about his background.

In today's edition of One on One Jan's guest is Ales Kolodrubec, born in 1955, the founder of the Czech Sherlock Holmes Society. Discussed is not only Mr Kolodrubec's life-long fascination with the great detective, but also the character's impact on Czech literature. This following the 150th anniversary of Holmes' first appearance on the page.

My guest today on One on One is somebody we've had on the programme before. The last time we spoke to Janina Hrebickova she was just about to leave for the Iraqi capital Baghdad, to head the Czech delegation at the United States-led Coalition Provisional Authority. Ms Hrebickova decided to leave Iraq at the end of last year and has been home in Prague for around a month. When she came into our studio this week, I began by asking her what she recalled of two of the worst attacks during her time in Baghdad: the bombings of the United Nations headquarters

Rob Cameron's guest in One on One this week is someone who describes himself as a "health clown". Gary Edwards really is a clown - a professionally-trained clown who wears a bright red nose, plays the tuba and falls over a lot - but he does these things in hospitals across the Czech Republic, visiting sick and terminally ill children and trying to put a smile on their faces.

Rob Cameron's guest in this week's One on One is EU conference interpreter Roderick Jones. Roderick's been translating and interpreting for twenty years. Currently he's based in Prague, where he's co-ordinating a team of translators working on a raft of documents that have to be translated by May 1st 2004, when the Czech Republic joins the European Union.

Over the course of the year we have interviewed a great many interesting and unusual people in our informal interview programme One on One. For today's programme Rob Cameron, Ian Willoughby, and Jan Velinger chose excerpts from some of the year's most interesting interviews, including a special contribution Pavla Horakova, who interviewed Vaclav Klaus in February, just weeks before he was successfully elected Czech president. At the time Pavla asked Mr Klaus what kind of a presidency he envisioned if he won.

In just over a week's time Ireland takes over the presidency of the European Union. It will be a momentous presidency, culminating on May 1 with the accession of ten new members to the EU, among them of course the Czech Republic. Ahead of the Irish presidency, I travelled across the city to the Irish Embassy in Mala Strana to talk to the Irish ambassador to Prague, Joe Hayes. I began by asking him about his background, and why he had become a diplomat.

Yes, the holiday season is upon us! My guest in this edition of One on One is Katharine Butler, the charming founder of Sparkys toy emporium here in Prague. In the interview we discuss favourite Czech toys, what it was like to start a business on the Czech market and what ultimately brought Mrs Butler to Prague in the early 1990s.

In this week's One on One I'm joined by Melvyn Clarke, a Czech-English translator from the British city of Manchester. Melvyn's grandfather was a Czech who settled in the UK before World War I after meeting an English girl in rather unusual circumstances. Throughout the 1980s Melvyn visited Czechoslovakia and he has been living here permanently since 1990. In our interview he discusses the Czech language, translating former president Vaclav Havel's farewell speech, translating into a language which is not one's mother tongue and the internet forum for translators he set up four years ago.

There was little cause for optimism on World AIDS Day this year - according to the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS a record number of people were infected with HIV in 2003. The Czech Republic is described as a country with a low-level incidence of HIV - the official numbers are in the hundreds, rather than thousands. But the real number could be ten times higher. I've been speaking to Marie Bruckova, from the National Reference Laboratory for AIDS, part of Prague's National Institute of Public Health.