成人快手

:: September 2008

Ian McMillan has been known for years as The Barnsley Poet - and even The Barnsley Bard.

He came into 成人快手 Radio Sheffield in September 2008 to talk to Rony Robinson about life, creativity and his autobiographical poetry book called Talking Myself 成人快手. Listen to the full interview with Rony via the link below.

"You once told me you were going to write your autobiography in a series of sonnets Talking Myself 成人快手 isn't all sonnets though..."

Ian McMillan - Talking Myself 成人快手

"No. There are one or two sonnets in there but to be honest I found the sonnet a bit restricting and I wasn't that good at it. So I decided not to," explains Ian.

Richie's Travel Poem

成人快手 Radio Sheffield's Travel presenter Richie Hawkins got into the poetic spirit and
he put his travel bulletin to rhyme! Here it is (although it might not be written completely accuractely, and the travel news is not necessarily correct any more!)...

"A travel bulletin put to rhyme - there's a first;
Come on then Richie, give us your worst...
But what should I say if there's nowt going on?
Just reel off some roadworks for a minute and then be gone?

"The M1's on the move, the M18's looking fine,
The trains and the planes all running to time.
You see with traffic and travel, it's about cause and effect
And saying 'heading southbound' is not gramatically correct.
Don't mention shops by name for fear of being sued,
And to mispronounce placenames would just be plain rude.

"So tell them in Sheffield there's reason to slow down
Woodhouse Lane's closed for starters, as you head out of town.
Mansfield Road's offered as a viable alternative
But on the inbound side it's temporary lights you'll have to grapple with.

"Linders Street, Fife Street, Neepsend Lane are all shut,
Roadworks on the parkway听might hamper you - BUT -
In Rotherham it's ok, not much to cause bother...
Centenary Way's doing well alongside the River Rother.

"New Mill Road in Barnsley is closed for a time,
There's a diversion in place though, just follow the sign
Something (?!) Park is fine and it's ok on the Winnets (?)
But the Snake is restricted to a 10mph limit.

"If you're catching a train then I'll tell what I'm able:
East Midlands Trains are running a revised timetable.
If you're thinking, 'that's fine, it won't affect us,
Remember Dronfield station is served by a bus.

"Now if you spot a problem on your way home,
you know what to do - pick up the phone!
The jamdodger line is the number for you
0114 256 12 12!"

"Ha ha haaaaa!!" - much laughter from Rony and Ian McMillan in the studio...

"Richie, that was fantastic!" says Ian. "Have you written poems before?"

Richie admits he's written parodies of songs before. "It was more in adulthood though, I liked writing songs with a more humorous note. I've done that a few times."

Ian has a good suggestion for the 成人快手 bosses... "Maybe next time there's National Poetry Day we should do all the bulletins in rhymes!"

"Sometimes people try to write a poem and it doesn't quite work," says Ian McMillan, "but Richie's worked; that was the clever thing. The rhyme, the rhythm and the sense of it. AND he told us the traffic news! He could have gone off on a tangent but the real traffic news was there."

Heroes

Back to business: Rony asks Ian, "Who's your hero?"

"I would say me dad is one of my heroes. He believed in stuff. They used to call him 'Honest John' - John McMillan. He worked for a firm of architects in Sheffield when he left the Navy.

"He was a man of huge moral courage, I always thought. A teetotal Scottish sailor. If people came round to his office and said, 'here's a free pen/calendar', he'd refuse it
because he said it weren't honest. So he was a hero of mine."

"In terms of artistically, my hero... Ted Hughes. He came from round here, and you think, 'someone from round here CAN do well.' And I always liked his poems without ever quite understanding them.

"He wasn't such a hero when he became Poet Laureate because I wasn't so keen on that, cos he took it on half way through the pit strike when I think he maybe shouldn't have taken it on.

"So you have heroes but they end up having feet of clay. Except my dad."

Ian McMillan's dad sounds like he was quite a character. He tells us about his idiosyncracies when it came to driving...

"I don't drive but my dad did. He wasn't a good driver; never got out of third gear and always used Navy terms like 'hard to starboard' in a Scottish accent as he drove!

"He tried to go to Sheffield on the train once or twice but said the movement of the train made him sick! Which I found amazing as he'd been in the Navy for 20-odd years, but the movement of the train between Wombwell and Elsecar made him
sick!"

Rony asks Ian more about Ted Hughes, his fellow (now dead) Yorkshire poet.

"Yes, I do read him. His early work is very good, like The Thought Fox which is about inspiration. He did go downhill a bit once he became Poet Laureate, because as Andrew
Motion said, it does do things to your writing, you have to write poems about the Queen Mother's birthday and all sorts.

"But even to the end of his life Ted Hughes wrote things like The Birthday Letters which were very interesting. And ALSO he talked in a Yorkshire accent, which was a fantastic thing. His mam and dad had a newsagent in Mexborough.

"He overshadowed a lad who was in his class at school, Harold Massingham, who was also a great poet, he wrote the best poems (about Denaby) that I've ever read.

"He's now completely disappeared has Harold Massingham, he's in Spain writing crosswords. His poems were like crosswords, they had that complexity to them. So I'd like to revive the reputation of Harold Massingham!"

Ian McMillan checks his directions

Creativity

Funnily enough, when Rony asks Ian about the most enjoyable thing he does, he doesn't mention poetry until prompted!

"Professionally, I like radio. I like standing up in public in front of people, performing, that's fantastic.

"I do like writing poetry, but I think I was a performer first and a writer second. I'm a gregarious type and writing is a solitary activity. I couldn't shut the door and be in the room for weeks, writing a novel. I like a bit of noise and activity going on when I write. Performing comes first for me."

Ian is someone who feels very strongly that creativity is the lifeblood of the human condition.

"It's what differentiates us (humans) from a piece of furniture... or flowers... It's the human condition, to be creative. I love the fact I can sit on a bus or a train and hear people telling stories, and half of them are made up, you can tell.

"Someone was talking about their mate the other day on the bus - he said, 'he's badly, he's got 'a face like a broken vase'' - I thought that was a great image!听If Ted Hughes wrote that, you'd think, 'isn't that a great image?' But this is someone on a bus, being creative - he's thought of a simile even if he doesn't know he has, it's our human condition to be creative all the time. Knitting... the allotment... whatever.

"I don't know why it is, maybe cos we're surrounded by rhythm - the sun goes up, the sun goes down..."

Family life

Ian met his wife, Catherine, while they were at school in Barnsley.

"We were childhood sweethearts. Been married 30 years. She's wonderful. But she said, 'You're not going to put me in that book' - she doesn't like being in photos either. So I've written a poem about that, which is in the book.

"The nice thing is that we're very different people. She loves gardening, that's where her creativity is; in our wonderful garden. Isn't it funny that people think poetry is a 'high art' but gardening is a 'low art'?.."

Ian won't be going on I'm a Celebrity

Ian McMillan used to put poems in his children's lunchboxes and Rony asks if he has an urge to put them in the oven, or in his wife's gardening gloves...

"She reads my poems - she like me writing and performing. I've always done it so she's used to it. She finds it quite odd, as a lot of people in Barnsley do, that I'm famous, that I'm on Have I Got News For You.听 I see them in the newspaper shop the next day and they say, 'I saw thee 'appen'.

"I think she still loves me. I'll ask her when I get home."

Rony asks Ian if being famous - on the telly, on Radio 3 - makes him worry about becoming a northern idiot figure.

"Yes! I think, 'are they having me on the programme because I'm a northerner'? I wouldn't go on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here... but I think we should speak like this, cos it shows that we can."

Martin Wiley

Martin Wiley was Ian McMillan's great friend, brother-in-law and fellow performer, who died in 1994. It was Martin with whom Ian began his writing and performing career.

"Martin was my great, great friend and brother-in-law. He was very important to me. We performed together. He was much better than me at comic timing. We did a Saturday morning show together for Radio Sheffield years ago. He cracked me up. We met at Darfield Church (youth group) and his dad was an organist.

"We went to the same junior school but then he went to Wath Comp and I went to Barnsley Grammar. He was a couple of years older than me. We went on a church youth holiday together. We were going to make a film about this church holiday and they asked me and Martin to write the words - the screenplay - and it made everyone laugh."

Martin died in 1994. "I still think about him a lot. I have a recurring dream about him where I ask him what it's like being dead. I found one of his books the other day. He was a really good poet. I think he would have been a better poet than me. It often interests me, what would have been."

Ian McMillan with the 'Barnsley Bard'

Martin and Ian did a Saturday morning programme on Radio Sheffield, which Rony remembers well. "It was wonderful at its best - but it was ghastly at worst!"

So how will Ian McMillan be remembered?

"I hope people snort with laughter! I want them to remember me with a smile. Or, 'I remember him cos he encouraged me'.

"I think people should laugh more. I don't like it when people laugh AT people but I love laughter. It makes you feel better."

:: September 2008