Ian McMillan Interview

Part of the Three Cities project is The Tale of Three Cities. The idea behind this is to use as many people as possible to create a mass of new writing throughout the region. Six regional writers (I’m one of them) will be inviting local people (are you local?) to attend workshops to get them writing.

There’s going to be a competition as well and an anthology and oh, I don’t know, loads of stuff. Obviously, this thing would fall apart without a figurehead to pull everyone together and to write brilliant things about us all in the form of one mega poem or possibly a collection of small poems or maybe even several medium sized poems and one really short one. Anyway, the organisers had to choose someone and they have,  Ian McMillan is our new poet laureate and a fine upstanding man he is too.  But why choose a Yorkshire man to represent the East Midlands?

Good question, glad you asked.
1) If they’d chosen a poet from just one of the three cities the other two would have sulked and taken their ball home.
2) It takes a foreigner to work out what’s different about a place.
3) It’s really really hard not to like him.
4) He is available.
5) He is the 22nd most powerful man on radio.
6) He hosts the Verb on Radio 3, just about the best showcase there is for new writing talent. The man’s radar is constantly up and functioning.
6) Nobody else would do the things he’s been asked to do with such good humour and a worrying level of enthusiasm.

I know about this last point because I spent the day with him recently, Ian’s been visiting all three cities being treated like a cross between a cuddly toy and the Queen, visiting places of interest and being photographed in compromising situations. You know the kind of  thing, Galleries of Justice, Ian with a wig and gavel Narrow Boat, Ian laid out on deck eating cherries. Interview for local paper, Ian with leftlion sticker on his cheek. That last one’s a bit of a lie. I was supposed to interview him but didn’t. I was having too much fun and besides, the man’s been interviewed to death. Here are some facts about him anyway.

He is a poet. He has been described as ‘The Shirley Bassey of performance poets’ I really don’t know what that means. He is very good at getting other people to write poems, mostly by making them laugh a lot, sometimes in different languages. He makes people think that anything they say is probably really interesting and clever , which is a good way of making people interesting and clever.

He is not a cynic. I think I was looking for that- some sign that he’s not as genuine as he appears but it’s true, he really is what he says he is on the tin. He says he has hidden shallows. He doesn’t have a favourite pudding. Bit of a shocker this. Claims he doesn’t even like chocolate that much and only likes something sweet first thing in the morning. He does like a good pie though, which is something. I never even thought to ask him which was his favourite root vegetable.

He is the voiceover on the Oatso Simple ads. Whilst recording, he was able to raise or lower his enthusiasm by precise percentages – down 10% for traditional, up an exact ‘nudgette’ for black current. Not everyone can do that. Very sensibly, his policy is to spend any money he gets for this kind of thing, unwisely.

By the way, Ian’s history teacher is the deep, slightly scary voiceover for Channel 4’s films. One day, some bloke from Channel 4 was in a bar with his ears tuned, listening for the perfect voice. He heard Ian’s history teacher talking and tapped him on his shoulder.
‘Is that your voice’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ said Ian’s history teacher in his gravely manner and the rest, as they say, is physics. Oh, and Ian won’t work on Saturdays in the football season, so don’t even ask him. Or not when Barnsley are playing. What more could you wish to know?

He’s going to be around a bit over the next few months and he’ll be performing his amazing Three Cities poem in October. Meanwhile, if this is something you might like to get involved in, watch this space.

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