Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's Poetry podcast. I want to start with a story from my life.

I used to be into M&M, the rapper, I know. Anyway, I was and I went to seem live at the

story of Venue in central London in 1999 and it was already known but not massive at that point

and it was a great gig and I loved it and I went and saw him again. That's another similarly

sized venue shortly after that. Also great and then in 2002 I saw M&M at the O2 Centre a much

bigger venue. I know he'd become a bit of a superstar and behaved accordingly. I even saw him,

I remember a 10-year-old look at like M&M. We died blonde hair and one tracksuit,

trousers and leg rolled up and I thought I can't like M&M anymore, he's too popular and it doesn't

fit my worldview and so I sort of gave up on him. Okay, here's another story which brings this

whole thing into poetry podcast context at Birmingham Polytechnic when I was doing what I like to call

my first English degree. I discovered the poetry of W.I. Jordan and I loved it. I completely fell

for W.I. Jordan. A particular book of these poems called The Collected Short of Poems 1927 to 1957

which was the sort of course book. It is an absolute treasure trove of brilliant stuff. So yeah,

so I loved them and I continued to radium after I was no longer a student and then in 1994,

four weddings in a funeral, the Richard Curtis film came out and featured a funeral in which

a man reads an order poem called Funeral Blues and it was very moving and became very popular

and suddenly everyone knew order and everyone knew the poem and I thought you know what,

he's a bit too popular now and I went off him a bit. It wasn't that conscious but looking

about that is what happened and then I know come to the end of this story and there will be

poetry in a minute. I went to a David Hottney exhibition, David Hottney, the British artist,

at the take gallery on the Thames. It was brilliant and I was looking around really and joining me

and I saw a section of ink drawings by Hottney, line drawings. I didn't even know he did that

...