You're listening to El Classico, the cycling podcast of the 2023 Vuelta España from Barcelona

to Madrid.

Today we're in Saragosa.

You are, indeed, listening to El Classico.

My name is Daniel Frieber, and I'm the host of this episode, and I am in Saragotha,

the capital of Aragon, and frequently described as the city of the celebrated late 18th and

early 19th century painter, Francisco de Oya.

Despite the fact that he was born 44 kilometers from here, a rooster-rion air would embrace centuries

later to lure tourists to tiny provincial airports in the vague vicinity of major cities.

From his teens, Goya travelled to Italy to immerse himself in that country's glorious

artistic heritage, according to some sources travelling to Rome with a gang of bullfighters

and soon finding work as a street acrobat, then an aid to a Russian diplomat.

He also apparently became infatuated with a nun whom he planned to abduct from her

convent.

Inspired by all of this, tonight's guest is another emigre who undertook a simile, well,

shall we say, formative voyage to Italy, and has since led an equally colourful life.

It's El Baron, the great dame, Brian Neigard, who are you in New York?

Brian, have you ever been a street acrobat or abducted a nun?

Let me just quickly think about it, no I haven't, I'm just browsing through the formative

while the years, you know, but none of those things occur.

Brian, I did read that, I read that life story, that very colourful life story, and I didn't

think of you if I don't know if that's any comfort or slightly alarming, you have led

...