Ian McMillan

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:33

My Castaway this week is the stand up poet Ian Macmillan.

Presenter0:37

Thirty years ago he was working in a factory gluing together tennis ball halves. Then he got a grant, chucked in his job, and devoted himself to poetry and performance. It's a matter of personal pride that he's not had a proper job since. These days he's known as the Bard of Barnsley, and his appeal stretches from the terraces of his local football club to the balcony of the London Coliseum. He's a poet in residence at both Barnsley FC and the English National Opera.

Presenter1:05

He still lives in Darfield, the village outside Barnsley, where he was born and he considers and analyses British culture from this very particular vantage point in South Yorkshire. I was born into a place that seemed settled, he says but it's changed now the pits have all gone, the old certainties have become uncertain the landscape has become greened over although I still walk down to the same paper shop for my paper.

Presenter1:32

That's important to you, is it? That sort of sense of uh continuity, uh of noticing the tiny things in life.

Ian McMillan1:39

It is really occasionally I think perhaps I should have lived somewhere else. But I love the idea that

Ian McMillan1:45

I've lived in the same place all my life. People know me.

Ian McMillan1:48

People couldn't care less, you know, when I'd been on the television.

Ian McMillan1:51

I'll be stirring the paper short, and there'll be a bit of a silence, then somebody'll say, We saw yer We saw yer yapping.

Ian McMillan1:57

I can tell you, what a fantastic phrase. And it's just nice to stay in a place that

Ian McMillan2:02

It's changing gradually, and you can do the universal in the local, I always think. So just occasionally when I'm walking down that street again to the paper shop, I think maybe I should have lived in Timbuktu or Bexley Heath, but then eventually I think no, I'm all right, yeah.

Presenter2:15

You began one of your books by saying mine is a small life that's happened in a big century. Are you able, then, to see the bigger picture somehow represented and applicable in in the daily rituals that you go through in in this part of Yorkshire?

Ian McMillan2:29

I think so, because um

Ian McMillan2:31

The part of Barnsley where I live is so interesting. You know, for years there was just a few

Ian McMillan2:36

Farmers and people eating turnips, and then there was a moment when somebody discovered coal, and then it all transformed, and people came from all over Britain.

Ian McMillan2:44

To live in Barnslin it would have been a boom town.

Ian McMillan2:47

And it would have been a vibrant, vibrant place. And then in the eighties, you know, after the miners' strike, it all began to go, it began to fade away. And we've had sixty thousand mining jobs replaced by six thousand call center jobs. And the place could have lied down and died, but it didn't. So you can see

Ian McMillan3:03

All of the changes that are happening all over the world in the twentieth and twenty first centuries in microcosm.

Presenter3:09

It would be very normal just a matter of two or three generations ago for somebody to live their entire life in the same neighbourhood, you know, with just within a few square miles of where they were born. It's much more unusual these days. What about that notion? I mean, you're you're successful at what you do. What about the notion of aspiration that in order to somehow realise the success you had, it it would have been the proper thing to do, to have moved on?

Ian McMillan3:15

Mm-hmm.

Ian McMillan3:32

People always said that when I was at school. My English teacher, mister Brown, my great hero, I wrote at the bottom of one of my essays, Ian MacMillan, Future Nobel Prize for Literature winner, and he took me on one side and said Nobel Prize winners don't come from Barnes.

Presenter3:45

Um you write a lot about uh dialect and you know more than most about the Barnsley dialect. If I was to pass you in the street, how would you greet me?

Ian McMillan3:54

I'll greet you on in a way that couldn't be

Ian McMillan3:56

repeated on radio because I would I'd move my head slightly to one side. Because that's what they do, there's a kind of minimalism. They do a kind of it's just a slight sideways movement of the head. And what interests me so much is that it changes. You know, you move you move fifteen miles down the road to Sheffield.

Presenter4:01

Fell wing.

Ian McMillan4:11

And the soft th now then gets replaced by a hard d now in. There's a thing called an isogloss, which linguists talk about, which is where language changes in a very small space.

Presenter4:22

Tyres

Ian McMillan4:22

So it's like if you go down to Derbyshire, where a lot of my relatives come from, North Derbyshire, well they call the house their ass. I find that incredible. I've just had double glaze infitted in my ass. Have you really? There'll be a kind of house slash ass.

Ian McMillan4:36

thing an interface where it it it alters

Presenter4:38

We must fit in the music as well as the chat. So tell me about your first disc today, Ian Macmillan. What are we going to hear?

Ian McMillan4:41

So

Ian McMillan4:45

Oh this is Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis.

Presenter4:47

Why have you chosen?

Ian McMillan4:47

Just because I imagined myself on this desert island and what I imagined was huge banks of cloud.

Ian McMillan4:54

And that's what this tune reminds me of, and Me Uncle Charlie used to play it on a seventy eight, and it was so scratchy, it was like it was being heard from another room.

Ian McMillan5:03

It'd play it that ain't stoppin' to go.

Ian McMillan5:05

That's music Ian. That is music. And it always makes me want to blubber, so that's why I've chosen it.

Presenter6:05

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Talis, by Vaughan Williams, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karihanen. Not uh quite as scratchy, I think, probably as your Uncle Charlie's recording on Macmillan. Um it's of course it conjures up that quintessential Englishness, the rolling green hills. It strikes me that that must be very different from the sort of Englishness that you were brought up in amongst, you know, the the the glass factories and the mines and so on.

Ian McMillan6:15

And it's recorded on the

Ian McMillan6:31

It's true that uh it was a kind of a bit Laurentian in that you didn't have to go very far to get to Green Hills, that's true, but it's also the fact that the pit stack of Olton Main uh dominated the village. Certainly there was a huge, you know, this black hill.

Presenter6:46

And indeed so much part of the landscape that d did you feel as a little boy that it would just be there forever, like the hills and

Ian McMillan6:51

Like the hills and yeah. I remember an essay we had to write at school, at junior school.

Ian McMillan6:57

I mean, my junior school was the most amazing place,'cause it was part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, which was a wonderful education authority run by a godlike genius called Sir Alec Clegg, who said that all children are creative, and it was the most amazing place. This essay that I wrote, Barnsley in the year two thousand, and it said

Ian McMillan7:15

We will all wear silver space suits, we will eat our dinner in tablet form, and we'll go to the pit on a silver monorail,'cause we thought that wouldn't alter. We had this graph when I was at school, what my dad does.

Presenter7:21

Mm-hmm.

Ian McMillan7:26

And my dad was in the navy. Yeah.

Presenter7:28

Yeah.

Ian McMillan7:28

And so he didn't work down the pit, and Zoe Rothyn's dad was the school caretaker. But apart from that, everybody worked down the pits. The graph was ridiculous in a way. It was pit, Zoe Rothyn's dad, Ian's dad.

Presenter7:39

And what about the expectations then that were fostered in your class? You know, if people were being encouraged to think very creatively and everybody has creativity in them, I mean, presumably for most of these young lads and and by extension their their their wives later on, you know, they all somehow would have a job that would be connected to the pit.

Ian McMillan7:52

It's a lot.

Ian McMillan7:55

It was interesting because, um, my careers talk was a bit like the one in Kez, you know, where you go along and they say

Ian McMillan8:03

You're a bright lad, you can work in the pit officers. So there was this expectation, I guess, that

Ian McMillan8:08

The pit would nurture you, because it did. It was a cradle to grave thing. You know, there was sports sections, choirs, brass bands. Sounds like a cliche, but it's true. But there's also this idea that you could you could aspire to be a creative person, I think.

Presenter8:20

Isn't there a great danger, of course, of romanticising it? I mean there you know there'd be lots of people who suffered not just in mining accidents but with things like miners' lung, you know, you know, went into their not very old age with with terrible chronic conditions.

Presenter8:32

People lived a very, very harsh life as a result of working down these mines.

Ian McMillan8:35

Oh, they did. I mean, my father in law worked down Alton Mayor and Pit all his life and

Ian McMillan8:40

Terrible, terrible problems with his chest, and you wouldn't wish that on anybody, but I think what what has gone is a sense of collectivism and a sense of.

Ian McMillan8:49

The individual

Ian McMillan8:50

wanting to do

Ian McMillan8:52

Well for the greater good of the place

Presenter8:55

You have three children, grown-up children. Uh now, what do they all live relatively locally then?

Ian McMillan8:56

Grown up to

Ian McMillan9:00

They do. Me uh yeah. Me my eldest daughter teaches nearby. My middle daughter uh works in the call centre. My son's just come back from Lancaster University and he's off he writes poems as well, he's a he's a poet.

Presenter9:12

Um and you've got a grandson.

Ian McMillan9:13

Behavior of Little Thomas, yeah.

Presenter9:15

How's his Yorkshire dialect?

Ian McMillan9:16

It's all right, yes, he's but he lives in Grimthorpe, so it's gonna be fantastic.

Presenter9:20

Let's have uh some more music. What are we gonna hear for disc number two?

Ian McMillan9:23

Oh, this is the great Andy Stewart, the godlike Andy Stewart seeing Donald Ways your trousers, and I'll tell you about him afterwards.

Speaker 49:29

I've just come down from the Isle of Skye, I'm Novelly Vick, and I'm often shy, And the lasses shout, when I go by, Diamond Persian Truisers! Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low, Through the streets and my kitchen go, All the lasses say, Hallo, Diamond Persia!

Speaker 49:49

Alas he took me to a ball, And it was slippery in the hall, And I was feared that I would fall For a huntney on the bruisers

Presenter9:59

That was Andy Stewart and Donald Where's your truisers. Explain yourself, Iain MacMillan.

Ian McMillan10:04

Well, it was my dad's favourite song. Right. And my dad was that very rare thing, a teetotal Scottish sailor.

Presenter10:05

Right.

Presenter10:10

Very unusual, yes. Maybe the only one ever

Ian McMillan10:12

And he was from a place called Carlworth, near Lanark, and my mother was from Great Owen, the next village to Darfield in Barnsley. And they met as pen pals just before the war.

Presenter10:15

Yeah.

Ian McMillan10:22

Didn't you

Presenter10:22

Didn't you find out after your mother had died that she had gone to prison for that?

Ian McMillan10:24

The chips

Ian McMillan10:26

That's right, she went to prison. Yeah, she tell us about that. Well, what happened was that they they wrote to each other for a couple of years before they met. They wrote to each other uh because my mother's mate had got a pen pal on my dad's ship and the romance blossomed and then they managed to meet a couple of times. By this time it was the war, so it was hard. My dad had be birthed in Plymouth sometimes and come up and try and meet, but they couldn't quite manage. Then my dad sent this telegram.

Presenter10:45

Hmm.

Ian McMillan10:47

I've got forty-eight-hour pass, stop, let's get married, stop. So he got the train up from Plymouth to Peebles and uh my mother was at this time in the WAFs and she applied for this forty-eight-hour pass and they wouldn't give her one. So she went Airwall and she got a train across and they got married and they had one night together in the Tontine Hotel on the main street in Peebles. And she went back and got arrested two weeks in the glasshouse for love. Isn't that fantastic? That is the most romantic thing, and that romance sustained him. I think that's one of the reasons that I'm a writer, because they were brought together by words, by writing.

Presenter10:58

Right.

Presenter11:10

And I just

Presenter11:20

Did they sustain that sense of romance through their marriage? It's all very well, sort of, meeting in the sharp focus of war and feeling the high passions then, but did they continue?

Ian McMillan11:27

Oh, they did, mate, me. Me dad was just

Ian McMillan11:30

A gentle, kind of romantic man. When he left the Navy went to work in an office in Sheffield.

Ian McMillan11:35

And he'd come home every night about half past six, and his mother would go and get change, and she'd put a kn a little dress on and some pearls, and she'd wait for him coming in, and he'd give her a kiss. And yeah, it was it was a s a sustained thing, quite astonishing.

Presenter11:47

You wrote a v a very uh a very moving piece of poetry about um your mother's death and and the funeral, a wind straight from Siberia, but i i in the end it is tinged with a degree of humour. And you talk about her wishing that she could have had her hair done.

Ian McMillan12:00

I knew it.

Ian McMillan12:02

Go to the

Ian McMillan12:03

Yeah. Well, that funeral was quite astonishing'cause she died uh just after Christmas, uh, two thousand seven it was. And my dad had been dead a few years and and

Ian McMillan12:13

She'd been she'd not been well for years and my dad had died on the Christmas Day. I thought you don't want to lose two on Christmas Day. But when she eventually died, it was terrible, but we knew, I guess, that it was going to happen. But at the funeral,

Presenter12:23

Right.

Ian McMillan12:25

Course it was just after Christmas. I think a lot of the ordinary Pall Bearers were on holiday, so we had some kind of reserve team of Pall Bearers, who were all older than my mother, and there was this fantastic thing that my mother would have laughed at.

Ian McMillan12:35

'Cause they all had comovers. Every one of them had comovers. And it was there was a gale blowing. And it was like walking through seaweed. And the the hair's going like this. And and I caught the eye of Mr. Charles with the fella. And the eye meant, don't you drop her, don't you drop her.'Cause she wasn't a big lady, but these guys were fragile. And then at the end of the poem, she's cross with me because she'd not had time to have her hair done.'Cause I know that she was so precise about that. Once a fortnight she went off to her mate to get her hair done. And if she had not had time to get her hair done before the funeral, it would have been my fault.

Presenter13:05

Let's have another disc then, Euno Melan. What are we going to hear now?

Ian McMillan13:08

I'm afraid most maddest are very sentimental. That's good.

Presenter13:10

That's quite all right.

Ian McMillan13:11

I'm a very sentimental man and this is uh one of my mother's favourites and my dad's favourite, the Black Hills of Dakota. And I always thought it was instant that Costa'd been apart for so long,'cause my dad was in the Navy for twenty odd years and uh he'd be away for two years at a time. So sometimes when they both got older they'd sit in separate rooms in the house. My mum would be in the back room, my dad would be in the front room.

Ian McMillan13:32

And this would come on the telly, and they'd both be singing it from different rooms. And I thought.

Ian McMillan13:37

I said sit with him if you want. That'd be fine. Sit with her if you want. That's alright. Then we get this on.

Speaker 313:42

Take me back to the Black Hills, the Black Hills of Dakota.

Speaker 313:52

To the beautiful Indian country

Speaker 313:57

That I lost Lost my heart in the black hills, The Black Hills of Dakota.

Presenter14:13

That was Doris Day in the Black Hills of Dakota from Calamity Jane. Ian MacMillan, let's talk about the nature of performance. You've said the only bit I like better than waiting to go on is the actual going on, and then I like being on, and the only bit I don't like is coming off too.

Ian McMillan14:30

I just love standing up in public and performing. I don't know why I like it.

Presenter14:33

Stage flight there.

Ian McMillan14:34

No. I was always a chauffeur. I like to I like to just talk and and and that. And

Ian McMillan14:39

I formed a folk rock group with my mates in Barnsley, Oscar the Frog we were called. And I was the drummer, except we had no drums, so I had tupperware. My mum's tupperware, and I had no no drumsticks, just knitting needles. And the first gig was at uh this church hall jumble sale, when the rector said, I'll give you twenty minutes once they've started buying. Nobody reacted and they shut the curtains. But that was it, I was so excited. And then because I was writing poems and

Ian McMillan15:03

I thought, where do you go and read'em out? Where do you read your poems out? There was no kind of literary scene in Bandley, so folk clubs were the place. You go to folk clubs,'cause folk clubs were very welcoming.

Presenter15:11

But why did you think where do you go to read the map? I mean, you know, po poetry, for a lot of people who who read poetry, part of the enjoyment, indeed the the comfort of it is the privacy of it. Uh that's interesting that you associated poetry with performance. Was that just to do with the mood of the time?

Ian McMillan15:26

It could have been, yeah. I mean this would be um the early seventies. I'd seen one of the first people I saw perform was Roger McGough and the Liverpool poets.

Presenter15:26

Yeah.

Presenter15:33

Surprise.

Ian McMillan15:34

Adrian Henry and Brian Pan.

Ian McMillan15:36

And so I thought it was the natural thing to do. I remember me and my friend would do poems and the climax of our act.

Ian McMillan15:42

Would be that we play Stranger on the Shore on a pair of plastic watering cans. It was just so exciting. When had you decided to be a writer? I think at junior school, because that fantastic education, where they, not in so many words, but they said, here's a continuum, here's Shakespeare, Dickens, and you. You can do this. You can be a writer. And then at the same time, by being a bit of a show off, you think that could actually stand up. You could combine them.

Presenter16:05

When you said to your Mum and Dad I want to be a writer, what was their response?

Ian McMillan16:08

Very encouraging, actually. My Dad always said I should get a proper job. My Dad always thought

Ian McMillan16:13

Partly'cause of the times they'd lived through. My dad said I want it to be a B A, not a B F.

Ian McMillan16:17

Which is a fantastic thing. He meant bloody fool. But then they were so proud, so proud once I started getting poems published in the school magazine and stuff.

Ian McMillan16:25

They wanted me to do it.

Presenter16:27

Let's have some more music.

Ian McMillan16:28

Now this is the great Alone Again O' by Love, which I first heard in nineteen sixty seven.

Ian McMillan16:33

when I was eleven and you're at that kind of strange age where weird things are happening, and we went on a holiday down to Western Super Mayor, and we stayed in this Ben Breakfast, and I was writing get this I was writing an opera called The Diamond Studded Triceratops.

Ian McMillan16:47

Isn't that pathetic and sad?

Presenter16:49

I wouldn't see someone

Ian McMillan16:50

And we all sat in this it rained, so we'd all sat in this.

Presenter16:54

If you were writing it now, I'd be worried.

Ian McMillan16:55

We were sat in this plumbing shared lounge in this guesthouse with these elderly women who were like the ones on Faulted Towers. And my mother said, Our Ian's writing the libretto of an opera. Who'd like to hear it? And they said, We'd like to hear it. And so I remember reading out the libretto of the diamond-studded triceratops,'cause I was and my voice was like that because I was only eleven. And then I went out and we I bought Alone Again All by Love, so it just reminds me of that amazing time when it feels absolutely anything's possible. You can write a libretto, the diamond-studded triceratops, they'll love it.

Presenter17:13

And my voice was like that.

Speaker 417:29

Yeah

Speaker 417:31

Seven

Speaker 417:45

Just one.

Speaker 417:47

You choose to do

Speaker 417:50

And how you

Speaker 417:52

I won't get tonight with you.

Presenter17:55

Uh

Presenter17:56

That was love and alone again or

Presenter17:59

Ian MacMillan, your work is very popular, your books sell, your shows sell out, you

Ian McMillan18:03

Not always, they don't always sell out. They don't always sell out.

Presenter18:04

We don't always know now and again we don't

Presenter18:08

Is it true that a few years ago you you were in the running for the Oxford Professor of Poetry, the one that there's there's been a lot of controversy surrounding you didn't get it, but I mentioned earlier.

Ian McMillan18:13

Yes, I was.

Ian McMillan18:17

I came I came bottom after a student who put up for a joke.

Ian McMillan18:23

Nice judic, innit?

Presenter18:25

Why would that happen?

Ian McMillan18:26

I've no idea.

Presenter18:27

Well you're not out there working the system raising up some of the things.

Ian McMillan18:29

No, some people don't like it. Some people think I'm a kind of sh fraud and a charlatan and uh and at home I talk like Prince Charles.

Presenter18:37

Certain critics regard you, as I was saying, regard you very highly indeed, deft, complex, subtly strange. Do you ever consider that this professional Northern persona that some people perceive, this sort of ecky-thump e-by-gumness, might actually have held you back for the slightly more rarefied consideration of the poetry establishment?

Ian McMillan18:42

Yeah.

Ian McMillan18:52

I actually

Ian McMillan18:59

It's true that sometimes people do take me on one side and say, Ian, we wish you'd write some proper poems. But the trouble with me is I'm a kind of

Ian McMillan19:05

Relentless Popularizer

Ian McMillan19:08

So, over the years, I think I've become blunter. I've become, you know, all these things that I do with the Poet in Residence, for the football club, for the opera, all this thing is about for me popularising poetry and just saying to people, you can do this. So, I think I have lost a bit of any kind of subtlety that I might have had, but I don't mind that, I don't mind. And in fact, there are a lot better poets out there than me, so that's alright.

Presenter19:29

And it's not working in a tennis ball factory. Tell me about when you worked in a tennis ball fact.

Ian McMillan19:33

Well, the Tennessee factory was in the middle of Barnsley, and I was on this machine called a buff and dip machine because they buffed and dipped. Is that you mean?

Presenter19:41

Is are you making that up?

Ian McMillan19:42

I wish I was. You stuck them together. And I thought this'll be interesting because it's a mechanical job, so I'll be able to think about poetry while I'm doing it, and that'll be a good thing.

Presenter19:42

Yeah.

Ian McMillan19:51

But in fact I couldn't because it required a little bit of thought. It nearly killed me writing, to be honest, because it was just so mechanical, so repetitive. And I stuck it for about a year, because we just got married and I needed to earn money. But at that time I was lucky enough to get a grant from Yorkshire Arts. They gave me 800 quid. So my wife and my parents always supported. Well, go on, they give a job up if you want. Go on, go on then. So I did. And I gave my job up. And then that's a terrible moment. Because she stood there like the long man of Wilmington going, I'm here, come on, everybody, and nothing happens. Nothing at all happens. And you go, Okay, and then so I started running writing workshops all over South Yorkshire. I started writing reviews for the NME.

Ian McMillan20:30

I started.

Presenter20:31

Uh the reviews for the NME, I I read that you what how much did you get paid for those?

Ian McMillan20:32

I read

Ian McMillan20:35

I used to get sixteen quid.

Presenter20:36

And you had to FedEx or the equivalent of FedEx.

Ian McMillan20:37

Yeah, I had to take him to Red Star Parcels. I'd go and see somebody and I had to type this thing out and then I'd take it to Barnsley station and it went down to St Pancras where somebody from the enemy would pick it up and that would cost me fourteen quid. So I got two quid.

Presenter20:51

Let's have some more music. What are we gonna hear? We're on disc five.

Ian McMillan20:54

Well, this is uh I like music that empties the room. If it was up to me, I'm a fan of what my wife calls squeaky gate music. I like music that is just

Presenter20:59

Music

Ian McMillan21:02

Strange and weird, and this is the great, the mighty Captain Bfart, Moonlight on Vermont.

Speaker 421:08

Moonlight on my mother Fected everybody even Mrs. Wood and well as Blit her nitty Even life boy floating with his Little pistols showing at his Little Pistol totin'

Speaker 421:32

Well, that goes to show you what a moon can do.

Presenter21:39

Captain Beef Heart and the Magic Band and Moonlight on Vermont. You would have been writing Ian McMillan throughout the the minor strikes of the nineteen eighties, were you?

Ian McMillan21:48

Yes, it was uh it was a very interesting time. I'd just gone freelance. I think I went freelance uh in nineteen eighty one, so I'd only been doing it a couple of years. Suddenly the focus of the world was on this little place. So it was a very, very odd time. I remember

Ian McMillan22:04

watching News Night, turning News Night on, and them saying

Ian McMillan22:08

There's a there's a riot happening at Courton Wood, and you could walk out the door and you could look across to where Courton Wood was, which wasn't that far away, and you could hear it and you think, Oh, that's interesting. You know, a place that's kind of been ignored by history in a way.

Ian McMillan22:19

Now is the focus of history. And I thought the job of the poet then is to write poems about it. So I wrote a lot of poems about it at the time.

Presenter22:25

And how were those r d did people even feel like hearing them? I mean, in the middle of the the torment and the trauma that so many people, from their various points of view, were going through at that moment, were their ears open to the sound of poetry?

Ian McMillan22:37

It was an interesting it was a it was a litera there was a literary element to that strike. It was so interesting. I remember getting the bus from Wakefield to Barnsley once, during the strike, and this little chap with a hat on, Trilby, got up on the top deck and he said, I've got a point for you.

Ian McMillan22:52

about the strike, and he read it.

Ian McMillan22:55

And it was like being in some kind of literary salon. It was astonishing, all across that top day.

Ian McMillan22:59

People commented on the poem. They went, I didn't like that. I didn't agree. Somebody said, I like that fourth line. That was so fascinating. And there'd be a lot of people writing poems. People would write poems who'd never written them before. So in a sense, it was there was a literary element to it, interestingly. Very interesting.

Presenter23:13

And what about with time passing? It was interesting to me that you mentioned that one of your children, your daughter, works in a call centre. I mean, so many of the industrial heartlands of Britain that that is what has replaced and obviously not in the numbers, but the jobs have been replaced by those sort of service industry jobs. What do you make of that? What do you think your community makes of that?

Ian McMillan23:19

Okay.

Ian McMillan23:23

We opened it.

Ian McMillan23:25

But

Ian McMillan23:27

Industrial.

Ian McMillan23:32

But it's interesting because you're trying to you we are trying to reinvent ourselves in Barnsley.'Cause the reason you were there, the reason that the population was there has been taken away

Ian McMillan23:40

So now you have to try and reinvent. And I think the trouble is sometimes.

Ian McMillan23:47

Do you post industrial places tend to look back a little bit?

Ian McMillan23:51

And maybe you can't look back, you can't forget history, because history informs us, but you have to look forward as well. And he's trying to find a a role for a place that's had the reason for it being there technically, and that's the reason.

Ian McMillan24:02

That's one of the reasons I stay, watch it, comment on it, be there as the place begins to to reinvent itself. I think that's all you can do in a sense.

Presenter24:11

What about the I mean you mentioned that you think you you've got a pretty sentimental selection what about the danger of nostalgia under such circumstances, that looking back to those days when everybody had a purpose and as you said yourself they were connected to the mine, there's a danger that if we employ too much nostalgia we do a great disservice to the community that we're attempting to serve.

Ian McMillan24:16

I'm watching.

Ian McMillan24:34

That's true. I mean, nostalgia is a the true is I'm nostalgic and I'm sentimental. Um so what you don't want to remember is the terrible wages, the bad conditions, the the way that people were forced to work down there, but but

Ian McMillan24:46

As I said before, what is good is that sense of community and the idea of collectivism.

Presenter24:53

Does it sound a bit dated, I wonder? Does it sound like

Ian McMillan24:56

Collectors

Ian McMillan24:58

The trouble is they've convinced us all that we don't want to pay tax. That interests me. I love paying tax. I think paying tax is what separates us from tortoises and grapefruit. You know, this sounds pretentious, but I think, you know, tax does separate us from monkeys,'cause we pay tax to help the ones who aren't as fortunate as us. I'm sounding like an old ranting fool here and wonderless into what a Captain Beef are.

Presenter25:19

We'll have to be very careful we don't turn into the Today programme. I think it must be surely time for some music.

Ian McMillan25:21

Yeah.

Ian McMillan25:24

It certainly is. Well, this is uh okay, this is the opposite of Captain Beefer, Nula and Vermont. It's another sentimental one. It's Pink Crosby singing White Christmas, so we'll all be blubbering again.

Speaker 425:38

Uh

Ian McMillan25:38

Remain.

Speaker 425:46

Just like the ones I used to know

Speaker 425:54

Where the tree tops glisten And children listen

Presenter26:05

Bing Crosby and White Christmas. You often work Ian Macmillan these days with with young people out in the community as well as writing all these poems. You go out and and attempt to inspire people. Um do you think the the creative juices are flowing of our youngsters, or do you think they live a life that sort of militates against creativity these days?

Ian McMillan26:14

Mm-hmm.

Ian McMillan26:22

No, I think young people are so creative. I think these last few years there's been a

Ian McMillan26:27

I don't know, there's been a renaissance. I think um

Ian McMillan26:29

When I was younger.

Ian McMillan26:31

To perhaps admit that you wrote poems was quite odd. But these days young people

Ian McMillan26:36

Are very happy to show that they write poems, write songs. Young men.

Ian McMillan26:41

Who can rap and who can do freestyling. It's a kind of currency that you would never have got in my younger days. Not just young people, older people. I work a lot with old people, I work with people with mental health problems, I work with people, homeless people. They've all got something to say. The problem is, the big problem is, if they can all write it, when do I get the time to read it? That is the problem.

Ian McMillan27:01

People always give me poems. People stick poems through in the letter box.

Presenter27:04

So what do you have in your back room? Do you have a huge pile of

Ian McMillan27:09

And so what do I do? Do I devote the same amount of time to that as to everything else? I should, if if I'm not kidding, if I'm saying, all right, this is important.

Presenter27:17

So what is the is that always nipping at your consciousness?

Ian McMillan27:19

Yeah, it is because you think in the end you disappoint them. That is a problem. And I don't know how we get around that. Where do you re-

Presenter27:25

Right.

Ian McMillan27:25

Uh I write anyway. I'd I I fan I did fancy when I was a bit younger having a study. Like a real writer. Like a real writer, exactly, like a real writer. And I said we had the loft converted. And I said, right. You actually had a garret. Yeah, I had it converted. I said, right, I'm off. I'm off to write now. And then I went up.

Presenter27:31

Like a real writer.

Presenter27:36

Who yes

Ian McMillan27:43

And I sat there and it was like it was like being on the desert island, in fact. It was I thought, What's happening downstairs? So I came downstairs and I said, Don't like it up there. So one of the girls had it for her bedroom,'cause I just like a bit of noise around me. So I work on the uh on the table in the back room with my laptop and my notebook, and I write on the train, I write on the bus, I have to sit.

Ian McMillan28:02

Somewhere where there's a bit of noise, my grandson comes in, we play a bit of football, we play Monopoly, the girls come in, my wife says, there's noise happening. It just helps me to think.

Presenter28:10

Um do you ever collaborate with your son in in poetry? Do you ever write together?

Ian McMillan28:14

We haven't yet, but I'd like to. I would like to collaborate with him, and uh my ambition is that

Ian McMillan28:19

P

Ian McMillan28:21

looks after me in my old age, you know, and kind of writes poems. And I have this vision of me. I have a conservatory with a rocking chair that is actually like a cosh,'cause as soon as I sit in this rocking chair, I fall asleep. My ambition is that I'm me and my wife are sat in these twin rocking chairs and my son comes in and he's just written a poem that's won him ten thousand quid in a competition.

Presenter28:37

Yeah.

Ian McMillan28:37

Mum, yeah, Dad, that'd be nice, wouldn't it?

Presenter28:40

Let's talk about your wife, because you met when you were fourteen years old.

Ian McMillan28:44

We did.

Ian McMillan28:45

She yeah, she um

Ian McMillan28:47

She was in the class above me at school.

Ian McMillan28:49

And I fancied her, but I daren't say.

Ian McMillan28:51

So I got my teacher, mister Brown.

Ian McMillan28:53

who was a very great mentor of mine.

Ian McMillan28:55

To tell her. So I don't even ask don't even ask her out.

Ian McMillan28:58

Come pale,'cause I spoke like this, mister Brown spoke like this. So I said to her I said, mister Brown,

Ian McMillan29:06

I really fancy her and I was like down the other end of the corridor and I saw him walking down as she stood there and he went

Ian McMillan29:13

And she went, all right, and that was it. And yes, we got married in 1979. We've been married ever since. How fantastic isn't that? But you have spoken to her since. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we do speak a lot. Does she come on?

Presenter29:18

You have

Presenter29:22

Does she come and and watch? Does she

Ian McMillan29:23

Occasionally, but she's heard it all before.

Ian McMillan29:26

But she's been so astonishingly supportive of this ridiculous job that I've got, you know. Then the other on the other hand, you know, when I'm do when I've done a show and I come home, the kids' say, So tell me again, Dad,

Ian McMillan29:38

People pay to see you talk. I say yes, I'm afraid they do,'cause at home I'm like Jim Royal, you know, I'm sat there in a vest listening to Captain Bfart. So, yeah, so the the kids the kids have grown up with it, when the kids were little.

Ian McMillan29:50

I used to put a poem in the lunch box every day when they went to junior school,'cause I thought I thought that was so beautiful. And then when my eldest went to secondary school, she came and she said, Don't you ever dare put a poem in my lunchbox again And then the her mates at secondary school thought,'cause they knew me as a poet, they thought we lived this strange life where we didn't have a telly and we all sat round in a circle at at home reading poems to each other, but it's not like

Presenter30:15

Let's have some more music.

Ian McMillan30:16

I'm a big fan of American music and art and language. George Gershwin is a chap who I love very much, and this is Rhapsody in Blue, which I would teach myself to play on a clarinet that I'd made out of a coconut on the desert island.

Presenter31:25

George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, played by Leonard Bernstein, with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. I'm wondering, Ian Macmillan, did your parents ever watch you perform your poetry?

Ian McMillan31:34

Um I don't think they did, actually. No.

Presenter31:37

What what did they make of your

Ian McMillan31:38

What do they

Presenter31:39

Well, it's not a single job, I know, but what did they make of your terminology?

Ian McMillan31:41

Um what

Ian McMillan31:42

Oh they got they were very proud. They used to have a a weekly column in the Yorkshire Post, and my mother would cut it out and seller tape it to the back of the cupboard door.

Ian McMillan31:50

Then when people came for a cup of tea, she goes, Cup of tea? Oh, I really don't know And this sounds ridiculous, but it's true. She thought the more radios you had on, the better the ratings were.

Ian McMillan32:00

So when I was on the radio, she'd send my dad into the other room with the radio. She'd have hers on in the kitchen and one on there'cause she thought the BBC was a big bank of red lights. And a few more. There's a couple more for Macmillan. So yes, she was inordinately proud. She used to think that when I was on the radio doing something,

Ian McMillan32:15

The

Ian McMillan32:16

The news would be interrupted.

Ian McMillan32:18

by news that I was on something.

Ian McMillan32:21

She thought that was gonna happen.

Ian McMillan32:23

Fantastic, that's the kind of support you want, isn't it?

Presenter32:24

You have now as close to a regular job as you've ever had. You you have a a permanent slot on Radio Three, no less.

Ian McMillan32:31

Yeah, Radio Three, the Verb. When they rang me up to ask to offer me the job, I thought, This is where you got found out, Macmillan. This is you you've had it. I was in a hotel in Bournemouth.

Ian McMillan32:40

I was doing a gig in Bournemouth, and and they rang me up, and they said

Ian McMillan32:43

We like to do a show on Radio Three, and I thought

Ian McMillan32:46

Blimey, you're with the big boys now. But in fact it was fantastic. We commissioned new writing, it's writing, language, performance, that's its strapline. It's like having your own magazine or your own publishing house or something, or your own T-shirt printer. And isn't it fantastic that a chap with a voice like mine can not only be on Radio 4, but can be on Radio Three. My next ambition is to be the speaking clock.

Ian McMillan33:07

Then people ring up and they get me, telling them what time it is. That's what I want to do next.

Presenter33:11

Tell me about your final choice to day, then.

Ian McMillan33:14

Well, I think that I was thinking about this desert island, and a lot of time you're going to be spent just sitting listening to the waves crashing on the shore, and a lot of my time is spent on trains or sitting on park benches or wandering about listening.

Ian McMillan33:29

And it struck me that what I love to listen to is what you might call ambient noise or silence. One of my favourite pieces is John Cage's 4 Minutes 33 Seconds of Silence. People take the mickey out of that piece and they say it's ridiculous, but it isn't at all. It's a piece that makes you listen. It makes you listen so hard. I realize we can't play 4 minutes 33 seconds because an emergency tape of Christmas songs would come on. So we might just hear a few seconds, but in those few seconds, whenever people are listening, they'll hear something astonishing.

Presenter34:16

That was part of John Cage's four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. And that is a legitimate choice, you McMillan.

Ian McMillan34:22

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yes, it is. It w I just love that piece so much. Sadly, during it, my stomach.

Presenter34:26

It did I didn't want to say that, but yes, your stomach rumbles when you do that.

Ian McMillan34:26

I didn't

Ian McMillan34:28

But that gives it that gives it the that kind of i honestly, if people just stand for a minute or four minutes thirty three and just listen, they'll hear the most amazing things.

Presenter34:34

Yeah.

Presenter34:35

As you say, for uh technical reasons we could only play a very, very small part of that. Um now we come to the part where I am going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take a book as well. What's your book going to be?

Ian McMillan34:38

Committee

Ian McMillan34:39

To matter.

Ian McMillan34:45

Good.

Ian McMillan34:48

Well, I thought you'd have to have a book that you could live with for a long time, so there's no point taking a novel that you might finish or something too simple. So the greatest living English poet is a man called Roy Fisher, who recently turned eighty.

Ian McMillan35:01

And he's written his collected poems are called The Long and the Short of It, and they're not easy poems, they're difficult, they're poems that you have to spend a long time with.

Ian McMillan35:09

But honestly the things he does with language, landscape, visual art, uh playfulness.

Ian McMillan35:18

Is fantastic, and I know that I could just live with this vast breeze block-shaped book forever.

Presenter35:23

It's yours, and a luxury too.

Ian McMillan35:26

The luxury I thought what I'd do is I'd get a bike, a bit like the one they used to have on the Goodies. I'm not very good on bikes, but he'd have this bike, and I'd be at the back of the bike and I'd have some s wooden models made of my wife and three kids and my grandson, and they'd be kind of at the front of the bike, so they wouldn't pedal, but I'd pedal them.

Ian McMillan35:45

round the island. She was totally useless. A bit like that doll that uh Tom Hanks had in Castaway. You know, you have to have somebody to relate to her. I thought, well, I've missed the wife and kids and my grandson so much that I'll have a wooden model of them and I'll cycle it round the island.

Presenter35:51

I thought

Ian McMillan35:58

In fact I might I might manufacture some of these. This could be like a dragon's den style idea. Wooden models of your own family as a bike.

Presenter36:06

I'm out. Um, yes, it's yours then. And if you had to choose just one of these eight discs, which one disc would you take?

Ian McMillan36:14

Well, the one that would endlessly renew itself and endlessly give you satisfaction would obviously be four minutes thirty three.

Presenter36:20

It's yours. Ian Macmillan, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Presenter37:11

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc.co. uk slash radio four.