You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear.

Today's Great Life was a singer, a songwriter, and a journalist. But to understand the man,

you really need to hear his voice.

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening to you.

You're to be my guest this evening to listen to some of my music.

Bit of biography is obligatory on these occasions I suppose.

I was born in 1950 in Twickenham.

My father was a racing driver and my mother was married to him. I was educated at the

Little Sisters of the Besset sacrament exposed but after quarrelling with my father

who was a senior airline pilot, I left home at 28,

and became by terms a lumberjack, a surgeon, a scene shifted in a pantomime and a university don.

And these days I spend most of my time voting conservative and telling lies to you.

That's brilliant.

...