photo credit: Des Willie, BBC

Ian is a judge for this year's Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.

Arts Council cuts song CURTAIN DOWN by Ian McMillan and Luke Carver Goss, BBC R4 The Today Programme, 18.1.08. Listen here

'One of my all-time heroes - he’s such a talented bloke, I could kill him’ Mike Harding

THE IAN McMILLAN ORCHESTRA Sharp Stories cd  Tunes here Featuring at this year's BBC Proms, Sun 20 July'08. 

‘Virtually all the pieces work very well and repay further investigation as Ian’s gift for acute observation and intuitive sharp humour gels with his sense of rhythm and pace. The slightly exotic musical accompaniments – Luke, Dylan Fowler, Clare Salaman et al- reflect just the right contemporary-cosmopolitan flavour. A definite success.’ fROOTS

'Ian McMillan, the John Peel of poetry, isn’t the first bard to set his poems to music: Ivor Cutler, John Cooper Clarke, even Betjeman had a stab at it in the early 1970s. But this is different. McMillan, a regular on Have I Got News For You and Newsnight Review, has joined forces with a bunch of top-drawer world musicians and created a lyrical soundscape that defies pigeonholing. Will surely achieve massive cross-over interest. I can’t wait ‘til he takes it on the road later in the year.' 4* review John Medd. Nottingham Eve Post 

Pete Doherty: ...he became resident poet of Barnsley football club. [Pete sings] 'It's a charmed life, double as a poet for your favourite team' and every song we would write I would try and get that in.
Sir Paul: ...and always get blown out. Have you got it in anything yet?
Pete: No. Maybe next time.
Observer Music Monthly 14.10.07

CHELP AND CHUNTER How To Talk Tyke (Collins) Ian’s new book just out

'As a listener, one feels instantly that Ian is an old pal' Andy Kershaw, Radio 3 presenter

‘I’ve been going to business dinners for forty years and you’re the best speaker I’ve ever heard!’ CBI Yorkshire & Humberside

‘Easily the funniest and most entertaining awards presentation I have photographed in over 27 years of professional photography…’ Giles Rocholl, Former Picture Editor, Yorkshire Post 
www.gilesrocholl.com 

His latest collection Perfect Catch and the McMillan Year at Dates.   Unusual recipes at  Biography and news at Press . For cleared press shots in different file sizes, go to Gallery.

from BBC Bradford & West Yorkshire website Sharp stories and cheerful chunter! Ever lived somewhere for a good few years but still felt a bit of a comer-in? When the non-Tyke member of this website team heard that the Bard of Barnsley was coming to this year's Hebden Bridge Festival she thought she’d ask him for some advice...

En route for Hebden Bridge! And if you think poets like Ian McMillan (from just over the border in South Yorkshire) just come in ones, think again. One of the highlights of the 2007 Hebden Bridge Festival promises to be an appearance by the Ian McMillan ORCHESTRA! According to the programme Ian will be dancing(!) with composer and accordionist Luke Carver Goss "in a performance that blends Yorkshire words and European music." But what would our intrepid non-Yorkshire reporter be able to make of these 'Yorkshire words'? Well, it seems Ian has just published a book called Chelp and Chunter: How to Talk Tyke. Imagine our reporter's surprise when she found that for Ian, too, preparing this book had been something of a voyage of discovery. He says: "I'm just like you with that book. There are some strange words in that dictionary that I didn't know myself. Attercop – meaning a spider – is a word I've never come across before." Christina Verguson 19.6.07 - cntd here

BARNSLEY v CHELSEA, FA CUP Quarter Final, 8 Mar'08
HARRY TUFNELL’S GHOST

I saw a spectral figure sitting in the stand
He noticed I was looking and he raised a bony hand
He said ‘Now don’t be nervous lad about tomorrow’s game;
I helped to win the cup that once, and I’ll help the team again;
A goal in the last minute that I’ll push in off the post’
And I realised I was talking to Harry Tufnell’s ghost.

Harry Tufnell, what a man, the chap who scored the goal
That won the cup in 1912 had risen from his hole
To haunt the pitch at Oakwell and give the team some hope
Of beating mighty Chelsea: if they’re the shower, we’re the soap
That they will slip upon and come a southern cropper
Harry smiled and said ‘ I think you’ll beat ‘em good and proper
And then I’ll raise a glass of Barnsley Bitter in a toast!’
And I realised I was talking to Harry Tufnell’s ghost!

Harry Tufnell is a legend and by tomorrow night
We’ll have other legends basking in the light;
Men with names like Howard, Odejayi, Leon, Steele;
Men who know how towns like this one think and breathe and feel;
So get your Wembley tickets booked ‘cos one team wants it most
And yes, we’ll win: you heard it first from Harry Tufnell’s ghost!

 © Ian McMillan for Sport on Five Live

THE HIGH SPEED TRAIN

The High Speed Train
The High Speed Train;
To the top of the map
And back again;
Shining in the sunshine
Gleaming in the rain
The High Speed Train!

A train is like a poem, it seems to me;
It moves on lines with poise and grace.
You don’t get more graceful than a HST
as it puts a smile on the traveller’s face!

It travels to places with names that sing
That linger in the mind as the train rolls by;
With names that crackle and names that ring
Under high speed clouds in a clear blue sky.

Harrogate, Hull and Inverness,
Places to visit and places to be
And just between us I have to confess
I’ve spent much of my life on the old HST

And the names of the trains shine like gold:
Stirling Castle and the Kingdom of Fife
Moving stories repeatedly told,
And I venture to say that ‘this is the life!’

Zooming along on that legendary route
The Flying Scotsman made its own
And let me tell ye I hae nae doot
That the last quarter century has just flown!

And I have to say that for twenty five years
I’ve clocked up the miles as the world’s moved on
Miles tinged with coffee and lit up with beers
Stations I’ve passed through and times that are gone;

So I want to salute the HST
And wish it a future on time and at speed
So raise up your glasses and say now with me
This train is a queen and a Chieftain indeed!

The High Speed Train
The High Speed Train
To the top of the map
And back again
Shining in the sunshine
Gleaming in the rain:
The High Speed Train!

© Ian McMillan, written for GNER'S re-launched High Speed Train fleet, 27.2.07

HERITAGE ME QUICK!

If you’ve had your fill of Ayers Rock
And the Walled City of Baku in Azerbaijan
Well, here’s a place to which you all should flock
To chew candy floss and sit on a tram

If you’re bored with the centre of Riga
And the Isles of St. Kilda are just too far
Come to a town where the embrace is eager
And as tasty as the cockles you eat from a jar;

Blackpool, I’m talking Blackpool
As a World Heritage Site it’s second to none;
Let’s celebrate the town of Blackpool
It strides through the world with a loud shirt on
It clutches a tray of fish and chips
And its hats of the kiss me quick variety
It’s got bright red cheeks and vermillion lips
And it’s earned a certain notoriety
Like a loud brash uncle at a party
Who takes to the karaoke stage
Like a grandma who’s flirty and tarty
Well: that’s what I call World Heritage!

The tower shining in the Lancashire night!
The big dipper reaching an aesthetic height!
Full English Breakfast: Oh, give us a bite!
World Heritage for Blackpool just feels right
Oh yes
World Heritage for Blackpool just feels right!

© Ian McMillan, written for You & Yours, BBC R4, 11.8.06

CONNECTED

Before, when you got mail,
It was a chap in a cap with a sack packed full;
Before, when you researched
You sat and sweated in a library that was just this side of dull;

And when you booked your holidays
You stood there in a queue
Behind a family of five and a pensioner or two
And life seemed so much slower, somehow;
There was acres of last week and just half a glimpse of now;

Today you click
On a mouse
And you can shop till you drop without leaving the house
And now you send 
Your blogs
Right across the globe and the photos of your dogs
Can appear on your site in the twinkling of an eye
And in a tick you get a picture back of Grandma saying Hi!
Framed against the backdrop of a California sky…


And it’s been fifteen years from before to this
And now we’re living in a universe of constant cyber bliss! 
And like the first fire in the cave
Or the first turning of The Wheel
The internet is changing how we think and speak and feel
And in the next fifteen years the net will turn and twist again
And go down murky sidestreets far beyond this Barnsley brain
And one thing’s certain: the net is here forever,
Constant as taxes, unpredictable as weather…

And before I’m dragged right under in a growing tide of spam
I’ve time for just this one last post: I click therefore I am!

© Ian McMillan, for BBC R4 Today, 7.8.06

REMEMBERING FRED

Remember the hair
Flopping over the face
Before the long run-up.
Remember the action,
Remember the man.

Remember the wickets;
Three hundred and seven.
In black and white photos
The big face is smiling
Or the big face is scowling.
Remember the bowling,
Remember the man.

Remember the legend, the thirties in Maltby,
Times harder than willow, times harder than leather
And cricket the chance to escape the pit’s clutches,
Times colder than Headingley late April weather.

And remember the big man
The larger-than-life
Man who ran up like thunder
And bowled up a storm;
The man they called Fiery
Who burned with a passion
For cricket, and Yorkshire, and England
And Time has caught up with the man
And the innings is over
And the man has departed
But the legend lives on

The voice like a rumble of a slow moving coal train,
The face like a map that’s been folded too long
And the action, the bowling, the run up, the wickets
Remember Fred Trueman
Now the over is done.

© Ian McMillan, for BBC R4 The Last Word, 5.7.06

GALLOWAY THE MYSTERY CAT

George Galloway’s a Mystery cat; an enigmatic puss
Who slinks around the BB house and kicks up quite a fuss.
When his fellow housemates diss his thesis based on Alienation
Of the lumpenproletariat George fears for his reputation

As Galloway, George Galloway, there’s no-one quite like Galloway
He sees the world in black and white and scorns the very thought of grey
But in the BB house he’s just another famous face
And we’re watching and we’re waiting for each famous fall from grace;

George Galloway’s a smooth old cat; his voice is pure shot silk
And his tache is dripping sexily where Rula spilt her milk
And folks like George go in the house to show the watching youth
That politicians aren’t just crooks who like to bend the truth…

But Galloway, George Galloway, be careful you don’t throwaway
Any respect you might have gained; rejection’s just a text away
Cos in the BB house you’re just another Z-list mug
To be laughed at then ignored and then discarded with a shrug;

George Galloway’s an MP, but the voters stand in line
At his vacant MP’s surgery, while he sits quaffing wine
With a basketball sensation with the manners of a bear
And when constituents bring their complaints, Well Galloway’s not there! 

Oh Galloway, George Galloway, you thought that you were well away,
Until an ancient DJ wandered in the house the other day
And Rula Lenska flicked her tail at Jimmy Savile’s hair
Cos when it comes to true star quality
Well…
Galloway’s not there…

© Ian McMillan, for BBC R4 Today Programme, TX 19.1.06

GOODNIGHT FROM HIM

It’s goodnight from him
And it’s goodnight to this:
Saturday bathtime, a home win,
The bliss
Of a night in the glow
Of a rented TV;
A family spread out 
On two chairs, one settee.

It’s goodnight from him
And it’s goodbye from me
To a comedy built on dances with words,
An eye for the language
An ear for absurd
Interlocutions, grammatical fluffs
And lines that my brother just called 
‘sentence stuff’
but it made us all howl
and that was enough.

So it’s goodnight from him
And goodbye to a time
When Saturday night
Clicked round like a rhyme
In the kind of odd song
Ronnie Barker might croon
And the words made you smile,
But they fitted the tune
Like the bloke in the glasses
With a face like The Moon
Fitted Saturday night;
It was over too soon
But it kept us all laughing
While outside the world
Was changing and shifting
He cut through the gloom:
The comedy furniture
In our collective front room.

So I’ll light four candles
And let them burn down
For an actor, a wordsmith, a genius, a clown;
And now this tired world
Is just that bit more grim:
Close the cell door,
Shut the shop up.
It’s goodnight from him.

© Ian McMillan, for BBC R4 Front Row, 7.10.05

CORNISH CLIFFS REVISITED

Those moments, tasted once and never done
Of long surf breaking in the mid-day sun
A far-off Henry chucks his bottle just for fun;

Young people mob and circle in plain sight
Long into the gorgeous Cornish summer night
Wrecked on the shore of dawn’s hungover light;

These stags and hens take Cornwall for a ride
In Daddy’s 4X4 with fifteen squeezed inside;
They roll in, roll out; like weather, like the tide.

Open their Vuitton wallets and the money spills,
And there’s the paradox: you pay for thrills
And paying’s what delights these Cornish tills.

Their cash is fine; it’s just the way they roar
And screech and bray and soil their silky drawers
And fight their late-night popped up teenage wars. 

And in the shadowless, unclouded glare
John Betjeman’s ghost just sits, and stares
As late night mayhem rips the air;

He wants to write about this chaotic age
Where booze and yells have taken centre stage
But look: Tristan’s spewed on the old bloke’s pristine page!

Toffs have always colonised, it’s true
Painted maps bright red that once were fresh and blue
But, on the whole, I like an unspoiled view

And I’ve asked John Betjeman, and he does too!

© Ian McMillan, for The Today Programme, 20.8.05

SLOUGH RE-VISITED

Come friendly words and splash on Slough!
Celebrate it, here and now
Describe it with a gasp, a ‘wow!’
Of Sweet Berkshire breath

Slough is open, wide and green
With gorgeous buildings in between;
In the museum can be seen
Slough life, Slough death

Which show the history of a town
That people have tried to put down
By talking of it with a frown
And cruel sneers.

It’s true Slough Town don’t always win
But losing’s shrugged off with a grin;
Slough can take it on the chin
And has, for years.

Some towns are just seen as a joke
Through a fog of prejudicial smoke
Well, let’s shut up these put-down folk:
Their opinions smell!

Ask Slough people if they’re glad
To live in Slough, dismissed as bad:
Mum and dad and girl and lad
Are living well!

In 1196 it was known as Slo
and through the years it’s had to grow:
people came here ‘cos they didn’t want to go
To Maidenhead.

On foot, in coaches, trains and cars
To the factories, houses, shops and bars
They came to play or work for Mars
And stayed, and bred.

It’s people, living lives with care
And breathing in the Berkshire air
That make a town think ‘Yes, I’m there!’
And the sneering fails.

So, Children, Husband, partner, wife
Dismiss the poet’s rhyming knife
Slough’s the place to live your life
So hoist Slough’s sails!

© Ian McMillan, for VOLVIC, 19.4.05
as an antidote to John Betjeman’s take on the town