In search of the meaning of Yorkshire

Neither Nowt Nor Summat

A glorious ramble around Yorkshire from one of our best loved poets

A love letter to Yorkshire … enjoyably so

Inching towards the status of a national treasure

World-class – one of today’s greatest poetry performers

With McMillan, you feel a draught coming from the blast of fresh air blowing through the dusty cobwebs that festoon most literary programmes

A love letter to Yorkshire…enjoyably so

all seen through insightful eyes, a weighty pen and told with an appealing sense of humour

Ian McMillan was born in 1956 in Darfield, a village near Barnsley, where he still lives. He always wanted to be a writer but all the books he got out of the library were written by people who lived in Surrey, not the Yorkshire Coalfield. He attended North Staffordshire Polytechnic, was a drummer in Barnsley’s first folk-rock band and worked in a tennis ball factory before finally becoming a writer. He’s been poet in residence at Barnsley Football Club, Northern Spirit Trains and Humberside Police. He’s written comedy for radio and plays for the stage. He currently presents The Verb, Radio 3’s Cabaret of The Word, and has also worked extensively for Radios 1,2,4 and Five Live as well as for Yorkshire Television and BBC2’s Newsnight Review. He’s worked in schools, theatres, arts centres, fields and front rooms.

I’m going to define the essence of this sprawling place as best I can. I’m going to start here, in this village, and radiate out like a ripple in a pond. I don’t want to go to the obvious places, either; I want to be like a bus driver on my first morning on the job, getting gloriously lost, turning up where I shouldn’t. I’m going to confirm or deny the clichés, holding them up to see where the light gets in. Yorkshire people are tight. Yorkshire people are arrogant. Yorkshire people eat a Yorkshire pudding before every meal. Yorkshire people solder a t’ before every word they use... 
 
If there were such a thing as a professional Yorkshireman, Ian McMillan would be it. He’s regularly consulted as a home-grown expert, and southerners comment archly on his ‘fruity Yorkshire brogue’. But he has been keeping a secret. His dad was from Lanarkshire, Scotland, making him, as he puts it, only ‘half tyke’. So Ian is worried; is he Yorkshire enough? 
 
To try to understand what this means Ian embarks on a journey around the county, starting in the village has lived in his entire life. With contributions from the Cudworth Probus Club, a kazoo playing train guard, Mad Geoff the barber and four Saddleworth council workers looking for a mattress, Ian tries to discover what lies at the heart of Britain’s most distinct county and its people, as well as finding out whether the Yorkshire Pudding is worthy of becoming a UNESCO Intangible Heritage Site, if Harrogate is really, really, in Yorkshire and, of course, who knocks up the knocker up?

Ian McMillan

Dave Sheasby

Martyn Wiley

Fine Time Fontayne

Judy Flynn

Full Cast

The BBC Radio 4 Crime Drama

Fine Time Fontayne stars as pitman-turned-private eye Stephen J Blackburn in this whimsical detective series 
 
When he’s made redundant from his job at a South Yorkshire pit, Stephen J Blackburn sets out to forge a new career as a private investigator. With his trainee assistant Tracey, he looks into a series of complicated cases ranging from plagiarism to missing persons. 
 
In Series 1, the duo are confronted with Hungarian exiles, a philandering husband, a long-lost brother, a purloined TV script and a time-share cash con. Series 2 finds them faced with seven stolen sculptures, a ransomed Filofax, a husband who reappears after 30 years, and a routine marital case that starts to look like their final investigation. And in Series 3, Steven and Tracey get digging in the murky world of flowers, crack a pub quiz fraud scam, look into the theft of a ventriloquist’s dummy and track down an Irish labourer– a case which turns out to be far more complex than expected... 
 
Starring Fine Time Fontayne (Coronation Street) as Stephen J Blackburn and Judy Flynn (The Brittas Empire) as Tracey Duggan. 
 
Written by Ian McMillan, Martyn Wiley and Dave Sheasby 
Directed by Dave Sheasby 
 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 18 July-15 August 1989 (Series 1), 20 June-11 July 1991 (Series 2), 18 March-8 April 1993 (Series 3) 
 
Cast 
 
Stephen J Blackburn……………………Fine Time Fontayne 
Tracey Duggan……………………Judy Flynn 
Mam……………………Rita May 
Dad……………………John Branwell

Ian McMillan

Books by Ian McMillan

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