And the Hi everybody this is Simon here with Brian. Welcome to Soda Jerker on songwriting

podcast number 135. This is an episode with a bit of a difference as it features a

return appearance from one of our favorite guests. He's without a shadow of a doubt one of the most truly

gifted songwriters the UK has ever produced. So we are tickle-pink to welcome back to

the show The Wondrous Paddy Macaloon. We got the chance to meet with Paddy at the Sony offices in Kensington Central London at the beginning of February.

He'd ventured down to the Big Smoke from his native northeast to discuss his Stella 2003 solo album, I the Mega Harts, which was re-released

under the Pre-Fab Sprout moniker on February 1st of this year. As long time

listeners will be aware we're not in the habit of repeating guests but for Paddy we

happily made an exception. We will abandon our principles any day of the week for

that guy. But yeah we thought it would make a nice companion episode to our

original Paddy chat from 2014 that was episode 53 if you want to look that up.

So you may remember we covered rather a lot of ground in that episode but only briefly touched on

megahertz so we were thrilled to be able to talk at length about what remains a truly beguiling, unique and

absolutely fascinating record.

It is indeed.

I still remember buying it actually in early 2004 from the old H.M. V. on Church Street in Liverpool.

Right. On the same day as I bought Sparks Little Beethoven in fact, which is kind of

interesting as the kind of shared a similar aesthetic in terms of the

orchestral sounds and the use of repeated

motifs and things like that, although conceptually speaking the very different albums.

For those of you who don't know, I trawl the megahertz had its origins during a period in the late 90s when

Paddy temporarily lost his sight due to an eye operation and as he couldn't watch TV or

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