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I fell in love with McMillan's work when I heard The Blackburn Files, a comic radio series about a northern (probably Barnsleyan) PI which inlcuded a line about how Hitler hid in Withernsea until 1964. Since then I've run into him in various locations - different corners of Radio 4, various incarnations of the Mark Radcliffe shows, HIGNFY - and I even have a Selected Poems which is rather more serious than his usual performance poet style (do I recall correctly it was about bell-ringing?).
And I regret not taking that volume with me to the one third full Carbuncle, where he was eminently accessible and indeed I shook his hand and later got him to sign a CD. The excuse was The Ian McMillan Orchestra, McMillan with five talented multinstrumentalists - Luke Carver Goss (accordion/guitar/flugelhorn/vocals), Clare Salaman (nyckelharpa/hurdy-gurdy/violin), Nathan Thomson (double bass/kalimba), Oliver Wilson-Dickson (violin/percussion/vocals) and Dylan Fowler (guitar/mandocello/vocals). Goss arranges McMillan's words, which McMillan reads, declaims, jokes around and uncle dances* to.
The tone is predominantly humorous, but there's an affection for those who are no longer with us (his mother's friend in the nursing home, presumably his father, Eric Morecambe) and anger at the modern world (Arts Council cuts which threaten regional theatres). It's obviously accessible, and very appealing. The music is folk, Irish tinged, but there are jokes at the expense of the form ("Death by Sea Shanty") and the need for eight hundred choruses. The party piece is how - like Otis Crenshaw and Mitch Benn - he improvises a song with words from the audience, but he does it immediately (sausage, wheelbarrow, wind and penguin) rather than taking the interval or having already got someone's life story over the act. And it's presumably harder for six people to improvise rather than just three.
I've bought the CD - I just need to find the time to listen.
* You know, that embarrassing uncle at the party, who dances but really shouldn't, and nobody claims ownership of as a relative. I thought he was with you?
And I regret not taking that volume with me to the one third full Carbuncle, where he was eminently accessible and indeed I shook his hand and later got him to sign a CD. The excuse was The Ian McMillan Orchestra, McMillan with five talented multinstrumentalists - Luke Carver Goss (accordion/guitar/flugelhorn/vocals), Clare Salaman (nyckelharpa/hurdy-gurdy/violin), Nathan Thomson (double bass/kalimba), Oliver Wilson-Dickson (violin/percussion/vocals) and Dylan Fowler (guitar/mandocello/vocals). Goss arranges McMillan's words, which McMillan reads, declaims, jokes around and uncle dances* to.
The tone is predominantly humorous, but there's an affection for those who are no longer with us (his mother's friend in the nursing home, presumably his father, Eric Morecambe) and anger at the modern world (Arts Council cuts which threaten regional theatres). It's obviously accessible, and very appealing. The music is folk, Irish tinged, but there are jokes at the expense of the form ("Death by Sea Shanty") and the need for eight hundred choruses. The party piece is how - like Otis Crenshaw and Mitch Benn - he improvises a song with words from the audience, but he does it immediately (sausage, wheelbarrow, wind and penguin) rather than taking the interval or having already got someone's life story over the act. And it's presumably harder for six people to improvise rather than just three.
I've bought the CD - I just need to find the time to listen.
* You know, that embarrassing uncle at the party, who dances but really shouldn't, and nobody claims ownership of as a relative. I thought he was with you?
