Driving Bill Drummond
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2017
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bill Drummond is many things. As well as an artist, a writer and former pop-star - he's the owner of an old curfew tower in Northern Ireland which he runs as an artists' residency. Last year some poets from Belfast's Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry stayed there and Bill published their collected work in a little black book called The Curfew Tower is Many Things.
Except for a poem the award-winning Belfast poet Stephen Sexton wrote. Apparently that one went missing. So Bill has left two pages blank in the book for Stephen to fill in with poetry as they drive through all of Ireland's 32 counties in 5 days in a white Ford Transit hire-van, giving out copies as they go.
But what exactly is driving Bill Drummond?
Producer Conor Garrett is there to find out. As they cross the Irish border and over each county boundary, Conor is becoming increasingly concerned he may not have a good enough story for his radio programme. It's a problem further complicated by the fact Bill won't talk about his chart-topping '90s pop band who once famously set fire to a very large pile of their own cash. Then, when a narrative arc does eventually develop, Conor can't be sure how authentic it is. And what's all this stuff about eels?
Producer: Conor Garrett.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:39.0 | Hi, I'm Rhiana Dylan and today we're going on a road trip. We're off to 32 counties driving |
| 0:47.6 | a van across the border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Randomly or not so randomly, each county in the country is passed through. |
| 0:58.0 | Each county stitched altogether, |
| 1:01.0 | together, leash after Carlo, after Kilkenny. |
| 1:05.0 | The border has no consequences. |
| 1:08.0 | That's Belfast Stephen Sexton, |
| 1:10.0 | our trip's resident poet. |
| 1:12.0 | Producer Connor Garrett is our driver. our we just was using through and not actually just. There was no other turn off there. |
| 1:24.0 | He's an artist, a writer, and a former pop star. |
| 1:28.0 | He was one of the members of the K-L-F, a British electronic band of the late 80s and early 90s. And you might have heard the story |
| 1:36.3 | about him setting fire to 1 million pounds. But why are they driving Bill Drummond and what's driving him? |
| 1:46.0 | Well, I'll let Connor try and explain. 5 days to get round each and every county in Ireland. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.