Test Match Special - View from the Boundary - Stuart Maconie

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Jonathan Agnew talks to BBC 6Music presenter, writer & music journalist Stuart Maconie.They discuss Stuart starting to work in radio via NME, his experiences fell-walking, and the briefest of encounters Stuart had with Prince.

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He's an award-winning radio presenter, currently hosts on six music, the show's on Radio 1, 2, 3. I'm saying, yes, you have 3, he's nodding, 4 and 5, that's the one I've wondered about at BBC Wies, but there you go. He's a writer, journalist, critic, who's written an acclaimed biography of Blur,

the story of touring in cider with roadies, and recently the full English, a journey in search for a country and its people. He hails from these parts, having been born down the road in Wiston and he presents his sixth music weekend breakfast show from Solford when it comes to cricket is growing interest in the game has led him to become a member at warwickshire and a very warm welcome therefore to Stuart mccone and it's lovely to have you here Stuart what a pleasure to be here in this exalted spot yeah what do you think it's fantastic

isn't it's such a beautiful we've got albeit a biting wind beautiful mancunian summer's afternoon well i was going to allow you to say that well it's i mean behind glass house. You have the best seat in the house, I guess. You think? Oh, yes. It's not bad, is it? It's gorgeous. So I said sort of developing cricket, but actually you came here as a kid, didn't you? Came here once or twice with my dad as a kid. I grew up with that Lancashire side of the mid-70s, which we were just talking about it. I've looked them up. It's a lever, Harry Pilling, folk engineer. We are about the same age. Yes. And therefore, and I was a Lancashire fan. Right. I used to come here in that time and I was just looking up, here's some names.

Okay. Barry Wood. Yes. David Lloyd. Yes. Harry Pilling. Harry Pilling. Clive Lloyd. Of course. John Sullivan. Yeah. Farouk engineer. Jack Bond. Jack Simmons. David Hughes. Peter Lever. My team. Peter Lever. My team. Peter Lever, my childhood hero, the fast bowler. Absolutely. And Ken Shuttleworth, who I spoke on the phone about three days ago. Really? Yes. Peter Lever. My team. Peter Lever, fascinated. I would, I would, to I read by this, that he was born in Todmorden. He was. Which, you know, he played for Lancashire, but Todden is the debatable lands right on the border.

Because if you've got to Todmorden Town Hall, there's a dance floor in Tomodden Town where you can waltz your partner from Lancashire into Yorkshire. I'm back again, should you? That's right. He is, he is a musical connection too. Okay. And he has been doing your very spot.

Tomberton Grammar School, who's at school with Peter Leaver, John Helliwell, saxophonist from SuperTrump. Wow. Well, I didn't know that. Yeah. The thing is, I was thinking, back in the day, that day, before daytime television was mainly people buying and selling antiques, they used to put, they used to put the roses match on all day on the telly. I know. So that's where I'd often see those, even though I didn't come to a lot of cricket life. I would see that as a kid.

But I grew up in Wigan, and Wigan is a rugby league town. I will say now home with the greatest rugby league side in the world. We pause now for howls of anguish. St. Helens, you can answer that lot. Witness, Leeds. You can deal with that. Yeah, but so that kind of dominated for, you know, the sporting culture. So I didn't really play much cricket at school.

I went to the grammar school where the others all playing ruggar. So I didn't play much cricket at school. So it was just those few sessions on and it was always about defensive strokes and, you know, all that sort of stuff. So very basic coaching. What do you remember out this place when he came here as that sort of? I remember, and I don't know if it's because you've told me this, but I remember it didn't look like this because it was in 2008. It was turned around.

So you'd have watched it. Well, you'd have watched a poor bowler flogging into the winter today from that end and being actually blinded by the sun when it went down over there to the left. Right. You used to run in the bowl here. Yeah, I am. And he couldn't see where you were going because it was blinding sun. And of course, Dickie Bird famously took the players off the field here because it was too bright

because there used to be a DIY center there with a sort of a tin roof. And the sun was bouncing off it at that time. time of day. They went off. This one of the few equations of cricket matches could stop for good line. Yes, the light was too good. Yeah. Only cricket could do that.

They've got the light meters out. No, it's too good. Yeah, too good. Got to go. But Dickie would do that. But I remember coming here as a kid and coming and watching. And there was, you know, smells are quite distinctive. Yes, absolutely.

You smell something years down the line and it's, you know exactly where it was. There's always a smell down there by the pavilion. there by the pavilion of the rotting cabbage and i know why it was this is not quite as lyrical as proust's madeline no it was rotting cabbage and used to go down there towards the nets i assume it was okay it was where the kitchens were i would hope so yeah but it was they were a great team weren't they were and yeah and i do but i do remember those names they're very evocative names of kind of childhood and i'm kind of from a different era you don't get many but maybe you do but i don't think you get many sportsmen called harry pilling these days

Already that size. Possely about five foot two, wasn't it? I think, Harry, he used to bat with Clive Lloyd, who was six foot six. You get this extraordinary pictures of the two of them together. That is one of the things. I don't know if it's changing, but that is one of the things

that is a relative newbie who's getting very much into much more into cricket. I'm coming to watch cricket, which is a crucial difference, I think. Nothing like being in. I'm realising that now. Cricket as a game comes in. It's multi-dimensional as a game.

I love football, but football pretty much exists on one plane, doesn't it? Yes. I don't know much about football. People are running and passing and trying to score goals, and that can be hugely exciting with the Ebb and Floyd game. But there isn't the same multidimensional, the difference in players, the difference in their physique, the difference in their skills, the difference in what they do and the passages of the game.

It's a much more nuanced and subtle game that I think you get more into maybe as you get older. Yeah. Do you wish you had actually had more of a chance younger? I do. I would have been pretty hopeless, I think. But the beauty is you don't know that. You don't know, do you? You might have been an absolute world-beater. Who knows? You'll never know.

I mean, you'd love the game. Yeah, yeah. You just will never know. I'm enjoying having my late summer period of enjoying it as a fan, and particularly, of coming to see it live. Entirely different from, and I'm going to say what might be a dirty word to some people, or two dirty words, the hundred, but that has been the thing in the last couple of years

that's inspired my love of coming to live cricket. Is that right? Watching on the telly? No, going to see it live. I have a good pal who may be listening to a good pal Fred up in Birmingham who said comes to the hundred you love her and I did and through that he said you should get come remember and come you've got you're not a gentleman of pleasure but you've sometimes got free time in the week you could stroll down to the ground because I live not far away

you could stroll down to the ground watch it and I said like I remember saying to him I've often got things to write and do that and he said bring your laptop people do and I noticed that so that's abuse it's just that I wrote a little of my new book between overs while watching it and I and it's an entirely different beast isn't it for the four day and the five day game the the i mean the hundred's marketing slogan obviously and it is just a marketing slogan is every ball counts and to a degree it does at the hundred whereas you can get and i say this is a as a compliment knowledge of criticism you can get passages of play in the four and five day game where it's not exactly attritional but people are jockeying

for position there's no patience going on as well yes yes a lot of actors come and learn their lines at cricket grounds really yeah they sit there quietly in a stand empty seats around and go through their lines it's the beauty of the game isn't it lasts a long time i mean one they do say don't they there's some of the couple of things the americans that can't understand about the game is firstly that it can go on for five days and be a draw and secondly that there are effectively three teams playing there's the weather as well and this baffles a nation entirely results oriented that no no no they're being here and the obviously you want your team to win but the whole experience is part of it it's uh and it's

It's fabulous, yeah. Even the fact that often the games you go and watch the county games might not have many people there. You still feel an atmosphere. There is that atmosphere, yeah. Yeah, sort of...

And it is, of course, just like this programme, which is very much this program, the soundtrack of the English summer as well. I always think of the... I think of it's a bit like the proms. There's something about it. You know it's summertime when the Tess Series. The proms is on, yeah, and the cricket is on.

Yeah, absolutely. So you're into Warwickshire? You're a bear, are you? Well, I'm... you're a northern bear i'm a northern bear i'm an adopted brummy so yeah that's that's my local team but obviously i have i would always have an affection for lancashire and these days Manchester originals yes yes yes how did the move come because you aren't your your roots really are up here my roots are up here but due to various circumstances leaving wigan and in the north in the

mid 80s um when uh i was moving my family were moving to birmingham and also um i was starting to become a writer for the new musical express oh yeah which was a life time, well I said lifetime dream. I was only in my mid-20s, but it seemed incredibly old then. I felt like I'd had a proper job beforehand, and I felt like a real old man, you know, to be working for the enemy at 24 or whatever, which isn't ridiculous. But I felt like I was much too old for it, but got this kind of dream job. And back then, you really, and I just didn't want to move to London. Apollonged to any London listens, but I didn't want to move to London. So Birmingham was an ideal place, and it very rapidly became, plus I had a lot of affection for it,

and could get to everywhere else very easily. So, since you're talking about your youth as a kid, have you watched Andrew Flintov's recent pre. I haven't watched it, I've not watched it yet. It sounds like a similar sort of a, like a set up with Preston in his case. That's right. Kids denied cricket and deprived of cricket

because it's not happening in schools and so on. And however reluctant they were to start with and they've said, what is this? Actually, the way it develops is, it's a wonderful, wonderful story about kids who had no idea about what even cricket was and now so into the game and it's not just watching the game as actually being part of a team which again they weren't necessarily before either it's a fabulous program well again I know it's a divisive thing and I know that I can understand some people's mistrust of it with the

hundred but the hundred games than I go to it's full of kids it's absolutely full of kids and okay maybe they won't all become converts to the the other formats of the But some well, you know, quite a lot will, and learned that there's a whole other game, or if not another game, there's a whole other aspect of the game that is different, that is equally enjoyable but on a different level without quite as much hooplaar and rasmataz, you know. Yeah, yeah. Have you watched much of this, much test cricket? I mean, have you actually sat and consumed an entire test match? Have you sat up on with Italian?

No, I don't think I've ever sat for the whole five days of a test, which will that will be my next thing to do. I don't think it'll be, I don't think it'll be this one. I don't think I'm saying anything over. What if I say? I don't think it'll be this one. But the different nuances of test cricket and the time that you have and the way that the game does change its tempo. I mean, you do get that in the four-day game, of course.

Yes, you do, yeah. But there's the international edge to this. Yes, and you do get moments like I arrive. Due to a fallen tree on the line at Mcclesfield, I got here a little bit late showing a cab with another nice cricket-loving fan who spotted me and said, cricket which we jump in a cab together and we did but I so I got here just in time to take my seat and immediately stand up again to applaud Jamie Smith's century yeah I

said did you did see that oh brilliant so the last couple of balls of it then to see that them short but eventful Mark Wood innings and and Gus Atkinson's dismissal so and as you say so there was a lot happening in the first 20 minutes that I got here and then there'll be another 20 minutes around for now to the untrained eye little is happening but you know what I mean that there is something happening there is all of the time even when it's quiet and peaceful. Are you a radio man first, or are you a writer first? What came on?

You mentioned the NME, obviously, it was. I always think when I said it's someone I'll think I'm being sort of disloyal. I always think, I hope, the people I jokingly refer to as the sinister mandarins at the BBC. Well, we all know them. Sometimes I hope they're not. Because it's the thing I did first, and it'll probably be the thing I'd do when they've wheeled me away from my microphone. I'll probably always be thinking of myself as a writer. But I also think that what we're doing now and what I do in my radio,

presentation is sort of putting one word next to another isn't it in a pleasing way so it all stems from that love of writing I love writing I love my book writing and I like I will always write for whoever wants me you know the great Hunter Davis so I know a little said you know there's nothing wrong in being a bit of a hack in the you'll always be done a good of a gun for hire or a wordsmith for hire and I hope I'll always be doing that till I can't do anymore but I love doing the radio and I've been looking enough to stay in it a few years now and I'm still doing interesting things like this like It is.

Yes. A new experience. Is that a case of just a door opening, fortunately? I mean, to have not many people, surely, have been on every single BBC National Network Radio Station. Maybe not. And some set, that would either speak. I mean, obviously, I'm going to say that that implies Renaissance Man. Other people would say, Jack of All-Treds and Master of Norn.

Or all-purpose media flibety gibbet or something like that. Well, I'm surprised about Radio 3. I love classical. I love classical. You know what I was thinking? earlier an analogy popped into my head as I was watching earlier that say the hundred and this or a county for it again is like the difference between say a three and a half minute pop single yes and a Vaughn williams symphony but i love both of them but they're both very

different yes of course and you can work at both so so did that opportunity just come and you just suddenly found itself talking to a microphone like i've always i've always i mean you do have to make your own look i believe that that great phrase of Picasso you said he's when someone said do you believe in inspiration and he said yes i do but it has to find you working and i think in the same way a look applies i i sent an unsolicited review to the nm e when i was a teacher in skelemersdale and by return of post i got a letter offering me a job now that's lucky but somewhat but i had to send it but i had to send that letter exactly but i'm very grateful to james brown the man who opened that envelope and got back in touch me and then at the nm. a radio

producer called john york came from five live to make a documentary about the nm e and hung around with us and said you should do some radio you'd be good at it or you'd be all right at it and and so that and that's yeah it's all been i guess i guess a lot of people's careers are like that really serendipitous little moments that's absolutely true but yet and yet but you did instigate it and when people talk about oh i've been lucky to do this or i've been lucky to do that and they'll i don't know whether one of the players don't after a while i was very lucky to do that actually no yeah because you've had the talent and the skill and you've gone out and done it's got to do Sometimes the door does open through a bit of luck, but you've got to kick it open.

And in the past people used to ask me, younger, rookie writers would say to me, what should I do? And I said, well, send people some stuff. I said, have you ever sent anybody any material? And they'd say, no. And I said, well, here's the thing. You get very little. No one comes door to door saying we're terribly short-handed of writers in this area. Do you think you can help us out? That doesn't happen. Show them what you can do? That doesn't happen. So, but I know it's a different world now, and it's a different world now,

and it's a much harder world because I don't know if that happened. Although people do always decry the changing patterns of the media. But then again, the internet has, I think, to open things up as well to people. So there are different ways that you can get your stuff written and seen to, without something necessarily to get like I did a job on a paper. Yeah, which was the NME, which was the enemy, which was just an iconic. Well, it was the Bible then. I mean, it really was.

In those days, the idea of a broadsheet paper reviewing pop music would be rethinkable. Was it a free sheet? Oh no, the enemy, it went through a phase of being a free shift where it eventually disappeared completely. But when I was there, no, we sold a couple hundred thousand copies a week, which was a lot there. It is a lot. We were in a big building in London in Kingsreach Tower, and it was interesting because we were, there was us, and motorcycle news, were regarded by the people on the tatler. We were regarded as these slightly oikish people who got in the lift with them in T-shirts and that. But the thing was, we made a...

it wasn't motorcycle and he's made a hell of a lot of money for the corporation so we were in this rather privileged position who've been seen as rather scruffy oakes who yet the court the organization had loved because we made them a lot of money because people all over the world bought the enemy and it was it's i think it's a bit sad now that i grew up reading that weekly music press religiously because in the pre-internet days if you didn't get your enemy on a thursday you couldn't go out that Thursday night and talk about the new groups and if you and that was social suicide so we were a very and it was a great way for people like me who would not never in a million years who loved writing and had some aptitude for it but would never in a

million years have got a break on a broad sheet newspaper because that's just not how it worked then but via but if i hadn't gone to the enemy i wouldn't be sitting here now with you because you know that's what that's where it started the tms podcast from bbc radio five live to embrace the impossible requires a vehicle that pushes what's possible Defender 110 boasts a towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms, a weighting depth of 900 millimeters and a roof load up to 300 kilograms. Learn more at Landrover.ca. There was Melody Maker as well, I wasn't?

They were our arch rival. That's what the sun in the mirror, if you like, if it was that real competition. They were much older than us and much more venerable in the sense that they've been a jazz and sort of musicians paper in the 50s. It's where the session musicians would get gigs from. We were younger kind of upstarts. We don't have been going since 1958 or something. As the new musical express incorporating accordion news

for the accordion player in your life who needed to. Really? Absolutely. It was actually a full title? It was a full title. Cooperating accordion news. Gosh, how many pages were on there? Very few. Because I think even in the late 1950s,

the accordion had slightly lost its appeal. Yes, about what the continent may be. Well, maybe. But so, yeah, they were sort of rivals, when i was there they were a floor above us at the same building that was in the same building so we would have a good nature we would have a good-natured well no not always good-natured sometimes quite acrimonious rivalry and across the board across the divide i made a couple of friends at melody maker like the writer catlin morani was a melody-maker writer and people like that

but yeah it was a bitter rivalry and you think now it seems so juvenile almost but it was very important then of course it was well breaking stories i'm going to see bans so so you were were going out, you were literally reviewing what new bands were, or established bands? I got, I studied doing live reviews around this area, Manchester, Liverpool. I started to do live reviews as a sort of stringer live review and very quickly it started to go well. And one Friday afternoon I was teaching kids in Skelmersdale where I taught sociology and English and I got a phone call. Well, the school secretary came in and said, can you go to the phone please there's a James Brown on the phone for you from the New Music Express and I said well tell

them I'm teaching I can't just do that and she said you think he says it's quite important it's about going to America on Monday to interview in excess so I said and the kids just looked to me I said kids a lot of them were older than me but they looked to me and said you've got go and take that car I said all right wait here and I went and I said well and he said yeah can you go Monday and I didn't have a passport I didn't have a visa and I came back in and said to the kids and they said what's it about me and I told them they said well you've got to go And I said, I'm teaching you on Monday. We're doing Dirkheim's theory of social enemy on Monday or whatever.

And they said, you've got to go. Just leave us some work and go. And that was a sort of opportunity that that paper gave you. And I did. And I went on the Monday. I spent four days on the road in America within excess. Wow. What was it like?

Great. When I got to the, this is, I've got to tell a story. It's in one of my books. When I got to the passport office in Liverpool, I said, look, I need a passport. Like, today, if you can. And the girl just laughed at me. And I said, I've got a letter here from the New Musical Express. Not realising what little weight that carried.

And she said, why do you have to go? And I said, because I've got this chance to do this big story. I've got a cover story for the NME in excess. And she said, in excess. Michael Hutchins, and I said, yeah. And she said, looking around, I'll give you a passport. I shouldn't say this. I'll get you a passport rush through quickly if you can get me his autograph.

She traded it off. And I said, yeah, wouldn't then? And she got, and I think I left with a passport in my pocket. In my memory, I left with a passport in my pocket. And got her, I've signed up and sent it to her. It's that brilliant. Wow. And I never read.

And when I came back from that trip, I thought, I think my career's moving to a different place now. And I've finished that term and then we came full time as a writer. Yes. And I was looking up, I mean, you've spent some time with amazing bands. A beautiful South. You were there in California with them, weren't you? I love that band. Do you?

Great. Well, they're very, I'm not sure. Well, loved it. It's past tense now, is it? Well, it's past tense, but Paul Heaton, the singer is still very much with us. And appearing, I think the Sunday after next, that Radio 2 in the parking press, Maybe Freddie Flintuff will go along. It might be.

It might too. So what happened? Do you have got trips like that? They were great. And just at the right age as well, I think, when looking back now, just at the right age when I could enjoy, you know, it's a young man's game, and I was a relatively young man. So, but hugely good fun.

And I had some great experience. And got to travel. That's a thing. With these people? I always say to people, people often say to me, Oh, Stuart, have you ever been to Prague or have you ever been to Chicago? And I always have a weird coda to my answer, which is always, oh yes, I've been to Prague, yeah, with Genesis.

Or have you been to Chicago? Yes, I've been to Chicago with Tanita Ticcaram and De La Sol. Because I, and people always think, you almost have the weirdest holidays. Yes. They've all been with some band or other. Prince? Went to me. Well, I never met Prince, but he did drive past me in the street in Minneapolis.

We drove past a lot of people in the street. Because when I was in Minneapolis, I was aware that Prince would be around. we were coming out of a club and a white limousine drove slowly down the street and i thought it's got to be and i waved and there was prints in the back seat and he waved back but that was the closest we ever got to ever got to talk to him no but when when do you say you have these trips of these like beautiful south i mean you're actually you're actually spending they're performing there are they presumably yes yes well back in the day i mean this is probably a business model that's disappeared now but back then what would happen would be they'd

have a new record out and they'd and so the enterprising record company would say have you got anybody who wants to come out for four days to america with them and i didn't realize this at the time i thought that it was all very like newsy that the editor of the enemy would say you know with his briar pipe would say steward i think someone should cover the new beautiful south tour why don't you go to america in fact poor really it's all a wing of the PR industry of course they would say we'd like some promo for their new single go out and meet them and i would do and in that particular what do you write about them though What would you, what would you...

You would just, my experience would be, take your time, hang out, learn the private jokes, learns everyone's nickname, don't be too pushy. And on that particular trip, I made a lifelong friend of Paul Heaton, which we're still friends now, I hope. And, but... You're not also revelations and exclusives and... No, I was never, that kind of journalist. I was never, you know, I was never that kind of salacious journalisties, but I was never one of those people. I was never, like, these names will mean something to some people listening, a Tony

Parsons or a Julie Birchill who would be there to bring people, rapid reputations crashing down or whatever. I was much more amenable than that. That's a great Jimmy Young used to say about you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. That's well that's what I'm fascinating in your in the fell walking as well. Right. That comes from the enemy days because having spent a lot of my working week, certainly I was going abroad at least once a month if not once to be two weeks. And I've been spent a great deal of my working life, on my working week, you know, at a baggage carousel with simple minds. I suddenly thought, this is not what I want to do on holiday.

This is not what I want to do when I get a week off. I don't want to be doing this again. So having been a teenage late district sort of enthusiast, I thought, I'm going to, we're going to start going again and I'll do it properly. And I'll buy the books. I'll buy the Wainwright books. And I'll buy a cagoole, which in 1992 made me a very odd music journalist. Now that whole world of walking has become quite hard. almost hip, lots of musicians do, and it's become quite fashionable.

Thousands of TV programs about it. But back then, it still had that image of the famous Vic and Bob sketch about the blokes with the woolly hats in Arkansas, Gartham, Garthendale, and all that. So it did have that rather fustian image of people, you know, the fell walkers were rather due were middle-aged men. But I just got into it, and I thought, this is brilliant. This is how I want to spend my free time. I want to be out on the hills, you know, because that throws the rest of your life.

into relief. You enjoy the different aspects more if you're not doing the same thing all the time. So I very quickly decided I'm going to try and do all the 240 Wayne Wright-Fells as he delineated in those beautiful seven books. 240.

And I did them, yeah. You've done all of them. I've done all of them. And that's some mile. Well, it is, but some people, there will be some crazy person listening to this who's done them in a weekend. I took 10 years.

What do you get out of it? Oh, do you know, I'm going next week to spend a few days in Cumbria writing, and my tree. for three days of writing will be if the sun holds to go and take solo fell walk on the hills on the Thursday or something like that it's people listening to this you know it will know that it's very hard to put into words but literally it gives you some it gives you but literal and metaphorical

i think perspective from things when you're wayne writes has this great line about his favorite little fell haystacks right says a man stroke woman i should say he was that kind of bloke a man could forget a raging toothache on haystacks and i i i get that because the scenery or Because of the scale, the scale, you know, some of it trembles upon cliche to say you feel your own insignificance and things like if you're in the company of giant mountains, a great mountain. But it's not quite just that. It's just getting a sense of perspective on things, I think, on life, particularly if things, you know, if things are churning through your head. Yes. It induces in me a great sense of calm.

And also, it's physically exercising. It's physically energizing. I love the, I love the tiredness at the end of a day, Spallwalk. And you know, and a pint of beer will never taste as good at the end of doing nine miles on Beaufell or whatever. You know, and, you know, it's all of that associated with it. I do, I absolutely love it. It's a lifelong love, yeah. Yes, you're pretty well organised, I think, and weather aware.

I am. Oh, I am, and I do say to people, don't, and, you know, I do, make sure I'm all prepared for it. But I don't never want to. And I know the mountain rescue people will not, also, thank you for saying, don't go ill-proper. But they too would say. don't let it put you off. You know, there are some people who'd say, oh no, you mustn't, unless you've done

a 19 skills leadership, of course, you wasn't. No, just be aware that they can, even the most benign English summer day can turn, as you will know, can turn very wintry. So just be prepared. Yes, but I'm taking, just what's stuff to survive on.

I'd just take a... What do you take with you? A flask, a pork, a pork, one spot would have been a pork pie. I'm trying to depatry myself. Coming from the pie, capital of the world, Wigan. It's almost...

Oh, no, you'll... Oh, no, Melton Mowbray! Oh, dear! You've offended so many people already. It was going so well! I meant a different kind of pie, a hot pie. Not the Melton Mellbray, but... Sorry, I realise I've strayed into dangerous territory here.

That's nasty. I forgive, John, and I meant the hot commestable pie. Right. Yeah. So, okay, you're forgiven. Okay. You can't possibly... Well, I do sometimes take a Melton Mowbray pot pie. Yeah, and a flask. And off you go.

And off I go, yeah. And I love it. I absolutely love it. What do you think about? Oh, all kinds of things. I often do this just generally at home, but in the woods near about it. But if I'm writing and I'm stuck, I'm stuck, I take it for a walk. There is nothing like the physical act of walking, I think, to sort of make the mental, like a safe, the tumbles of the brain fall into place.

Suddenly something... Stimulation. An intro to a piece or a part, I could be reached the reach of a week. impasse somewhere in a piece and just take it for a while in the block and suddenly it just clicks. So do you write it down? I find I'm in the car sometimes. Yeah. And I think of something. Yeah. And I don't, oh, what are I going to use? And I can't write it down and I forget it. I use voice notes on my phone. Straight on, bang. I use voice notes on my phone now, which is a really handy thing to do. And of course, you can do it without people thinking you're too crazy because people think, oh, he's on the phone.

Because in fact, I'm dictating them. Yeah. Yeah, it's official. I have spent much of the morning watching Northern Soul. Great. And I don't know why it's kind of passed me by a lot. I just not... You didn't know about it. I really knew nothing about it. That's not surprising. It is a cultish scene. People who love it really love it, but it is not well known. It had a brief flurry overground in the mid-70s and I hope again nice, thanks to our Northern Soul orchestrated shows, which we did a problem. And I watched a problem from last year as well. Oh, it's fantastic. You should come. We're playing again in November. We're doing venues again in November.

You wouldn't want to see me dance, let alone try the Northern Soul. You don't need to dance, you just need to enjoy. I defy anyone not to enjoy that evening. I say I know that I have a vested interest, but we're coming to Manchester Liverpool, Birmingham, Birmingham, and Stockton again in November. We've done Sheffield, Wolverhampton. We, of course, did the Royal Albert Hall. One, it's always one of the greatest moments of my life. I snuck out from that stage where I spent a lot of the time into the hall itself,

where the promers are, who were dancing, while the night. while the night was being played Frankie Valley in the four seasons sung by Daryl Smith. And I looked up and every single person in that building was up on their feet. And it was a really goose pimpling moment. Even just thinking about it, no, it's giving me the goose pimples again. And it was, yeah, if people haven't seen the prom, I think it's still on YouTube. It says on YouTube, yeah. It's such, it's just such irrepressible and brilliant music

that I think it speaks. It's hard for me to imagine people not liking it. I mean, some people might not like it. I thought it's great. I was watching, there's a fantastic film on YouTube. bit. I don't know why I haven't come across Northern Soul before, but do I love you, Frank Wilson? Oh, Frank Wilson, yeah. And there it is. I don't know what, this must have been shot. It looks like black and white, I think. It's hard to tell sometimes. There's a fella there with

braces and, and the moves. I mean, how, how do you learn it? Because it's got a lot of sliding going on. I think, couldn't do it in modern training shows. Well, the people used to take talcum powder. People would throw talcum powder on the, classic Northern Soul get up, you would see guys with, and girls with a beer towel on their belt to wipe their hands and wipe their heads from the sweat and they would throw talc down to get that slide right. These days you can learn by gun on YouTube and watching brilliant Northern Soul dancers do tutorials.

Back then what you would do on the dance floor at Wien Casino, there were certain sections of the dance floor, certain corners that were reserved for the best dancers and Tyros and rookies would wait and dance a little on the outskirts until they got the moves and skills. They'd just by emulating the people they saw. But I would stress again, Some of the top Norden Sol DJs never dance

because you can just love the music or the, it's a bit like cricket, it's multi-dimensional. You can be into the music, you can be into the clothes, you can be into the collecting aspects of it, or you can be into the dancing. There's lots of different aspects for you to enjoy. How did it start?

There are some interesting moves, that sort of sliding shuffly stuff, clapping hand, quite high kicking going on. Yeah, the claps are a brilliant moment because all Northern Soul records, many Northern So records have claps at certain points. And if you're an uninitiated person, and you come into a Northern Soul Club and you see, for instance, at the right

moment of Tainted Love, for instance, the name and obviously example, you see the people who do the claps at the same thing. It's really quite an astonishing thing to hear that they go off like gunfire, you know, across the dance floor. And it's, yeah, it began some people would say not very far from here. On Whitworth Street in Manchester, a trusted wheel club, which is where they, the DJs, these by and large are flop records, flop records from America in the 1960s, which was. then discovered a few years later by enterprising DJs here in clubs in the North in the Midlands, Bolton, Coventry, the Golden Torch in Stoke, the Catecumns in Wolverhampton,

Wayne Casino. They brought these rare, obscure flop records back, played them to a new generation of working class kids in the North and the Midlands who just embraced them, this kind of kinship between the two communities and it became a really, and persisting being a massively passionate scene that I hope when the people came to me and said do you think a northern sole prom would work I said yeah I think it might because the people these records should have sounded like this 40 years ago when the people made them but they didn't have the money on the budgets we've got the BBC concert orchestra these brilliant singers so I think we're playing the records as they're supposed to be

heard and and I hope we're introducing it to the whole new generation yeah well I remember even my generation I shall get you sixty four years old get you some Talcampere and I know you would be You wouldn't want to see that. But it's amazing how things like that, something like dancing like that, can evolve in just a certain part of the world like this. Oh, up here.

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm very proud of it up here. Yeah, I think they are. I think they are. And there's something about it. What I do love to see is, like at the recent concerts, you realize that this music has been with people often of our age since they were 14. Yes.

So it's been the night as well. It's all night. Yes. And it's been the soundtrack to first job, first love, divorce, bereavement, bad times and good times. It's been the soundtrack to the ups and downs of their life, but these records have been constant in their life. And you see that when you see a burly man of a certain age

looking like, you know, a fairly prepossessing bloke with tears in his eyes, sing along to, you're going to love my baby by Barbara McNair. And it's an extraordinary thing to see. It's music of such emotion, and it means so much to those people. Yeah. Well, I've really enjoyed discovering it today. Thanks to meeting you, Stuart. Thank you.

We're about done. 40 minutes flies, isn't it? You know from your radio experience. Absolutely. Well, this is, thank you. Because this has been a lifetime ambition. The breakfast people I've worked with are going back at my, have usually been completely bonkers.

Okay. Do you fall into that category? I don't think, early in the morning and all that energy. I don't think, I don't think I do. You know, when you see a salutary thing, go to Broadcasting Heights in London, or Wogan House in London, early on a Saturday morning,

and watch Tony Blackburn coming in to do his radio show with his bag of records still with the same puppy dog enthusiasm that he had 60 years ago, Czech's notes. And it is great. Well, I know this is hard work. We know to me, but it's not like proper work. Don't give the game a while. You're doing so well. It's been lovely to meet you.

Thank you so much. Such a privilege.