Last year's interviews

Peggy Seeger...

Peggy gave us an interview by telephone prior to her appearance at the Sage Gateshead in November. A week later she appeared at Reeth Memorial Hall in Yorkshire. In both settings, she shone as a great musician with a delightful sense of humour - and as a highly accessible, loving human being.

 Poet and broadcaster Ian MacMillan generously gave us more than 30 minutes of his time during the Free Thinking Festival at the Sage Gateshead, run by BBC Radio 3. We sat in the library and talked about poetry in prisons, young people and poetry and never quite got to discussing why so many Yorkshire towns begin with B.


During that same Free Thinking Festival we managed to grab a quick interview in a very noisy green room with Soweto Kinch - saxophonist extraordinaire. Fingers crossed that we may be able to speak with him again when he comes up for the Gateshead Jazz Festival.

The evening before, there was a recording of 'Vultures', a new radio play by Roy Williams at the Baltic. After the recording he kindly did an interview during which he spoke, amongst other things, about whether or not it was important for black children to grow up seeing images of themselves in literature, and the need for retaining Black History Month. 

ps, this photo was borrowed from the London Evening Standard... can't think why I didn't take one myself - all the other photos are mine.