OUT NOW: Bygone Chester

It's out now. Featuring scores of vintage photographs, Bygone Chester charts the history of this ancient city.

OUT NOW: Bygone Liverpool

It's out now. Featuring more than 85 vintage photographs, Bygone Liverpool charts the development of the city from its Victorian prosperity to its wartime austerity.

This extensive pictorial history is married with a commentary by writer David Clensy, who gives readers a personal introduction to his Liverpool home. There's no finer way to get to grips with the glorious history of this European Capital of Culture.

As I say, it's out now.

OUT NOW: Walking The Wolds Way

Walking The Wolds Way:
Yorkshire on Foot from Hull to Filey

David Clensy had never walked further than his car door when he decided to take on the 80 miles of the Yorkshire Wolds Way. Join him as he steps out on the trek from Hull to Filey. Whether you're planning to walk the Way or just fancy a chuckle at someone else's misfortunes, you are sure to be engrossed in the journey.

To order your copy visit Amazon, Foyles or direct from the publishers

Welcome to my blog ...

This is the main page for my multi-layered blog, The First Rough Draft, but most of my blogging now takes place at the daily blog page Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These.

Take a look at the links to other layers of the blog on the lefthand side of this page.

Thanks for visiting.

Basket case

Hey look, you can buy me at Tesco now ... every little helps.

And here's something else to be watching ...

Get Your Own! View Slideshow

Reader discovered ...

Enormous thanks to Kathy Barham (of "194 Radio City: The Heart of Liverpool" fame), for saying nice things about my books in a recent interview, which you can read by clicking here.

Frank McCourt

There's a wonderful irony to calling the Savoy Hotel to speak to Frank McCourt. He couldn't have travelled much further from the Limerick slums of his childhood, which he immortalised in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Angela's Ashes.

But as his voice flows down the line, calm and wise and gnarled by the decades like a creaking oak, you sense he's a man who would never take for granted the trappings of success.

More than 40 years of standing at the front of New York classrooms is anchoring enough for him to keep his feet firmly on the ground.

His latest book Teacher Man, the third in his memoir series, brings him to the Cheltenham Literature Festival this week, so I had the opportunity to interview him.

"I didn't learn much myself as a child at school in Limerick," he told me. "I learnt to be terrified. I learnt fear and trembling. In my youth in Ireland schools were still like something from the Victorian era.

"My education at that age came from reading library books. I admired the detail in Dickens' novels in particular, and the way he wrote about something as real as our poverty. But I was always frustrated by the inevitability of his happy endings. I could see life wasn't really like that, so it annoyed me."

Frank finally found happiness after emigrating and becoming a teacher in some of New York's roughest schools. It's a vocation he only ended in the 1990s when in his 60s he found literary success with his first memoir Angela's Ashes.

"I don't regret leaving teaching," he says. "I was ready to leave by that age. I'd been through the first act of my life, and it was time to move on to the second act. But I never imagined the success I'd have as a writer."

It's the sort of happy ending he'd found implausible in Dickens' novels. There's a chuckle down the line as I gently point this out to him, as he glances around his Savoy hotel room, remembering the shared-bed slums of Limerick.

"You see," he laughs after a moment. "That's what you call a pregnant observation. But you're right, I take it all back what I said about Dickens."

To read the full interview with Frank McCourt click here for the Gloucestershire Echo's website

Simon Armitage

There can’t be many jobs further removed from poetry than working as a probation officer on the tough streets of Manchester’s roughest areas, so Simon Armitage has to be something of an inspiration to would-be writers everywhere.

During his seven years working with troubled and sometimes aggressive youngsters in places like Moss Side can’t have left Simon Armitage with any great indiction that he would one day be a best-selling poet.

And after previously trying his hand at shelf-stacking, lathe working and even disco DJing, Simon probably knew better than to try to predict his future.

I interviewed Simon this week ahead of the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

"Poetry became something I’d do when I got home from work," he told me. "I found the probation service job tough. You had to deal with some fairly unpleasant characters, and I’d often feel like I didn’t want to go to work and start picking through people’s troubled lives.

"But coming home and writing poetry at the end of the day was like a retreat into another universe for a few hours.

"I certainly never had ambitions to be a writer," he added. "It’s just something that happened to me.”

More bookshops ....

Exciting times for both books. The Mole of Edge Hill and Island Life: A History of Looe Island are now both available from WH Smith's online, and from Blackwell's online.

Also, by the miracle of modern technology, both books are now also available in fully searchable scanned versions on Google Booksearch, as is Feature Writing: A Practical Introduction (Sage Publications), which I also contributed a couple of chapters to.

OUT NOW: The Mole Of Edge Hill

Now available through amazon.co.uk

Williamson's Tunnels remain one of Liverpool's most intriguing mysteries, some two centuries after they were constructed by the city's greatest eccentric, Joseph Williamson.

In the early years of the nineteenth century this rich merchant paid a secret army of men to dig a labyrinth that stretches for miles beneath the city.

In The Mole Of Edge Hill writer David Clensy presents a dual approach to understanding more about this singular character. The first half of the book is a short novel in which the author brings the eerie subterranean world to life, imagining what Williamson's life may have been like. In the second half of the book, after years of research, the writer presents the most in-depth history yet written of the real Mole Of Edge Hill. Published July 2006

Return to the Status Quo

Interviewed Francis Rossi of Status Quo again yesterday. I spoke to him roughly this time last year, though I think he'd had a few on that day and I struggled to get sense out of him.

No such problems this time around, and he was a fascinating bloke to talk to. Did you know his nose once fell off in the shower through snorting too much coke?

Since I last spoke to him he'd also gone through the sombre experience of finding out that his rock 'n' roll partner of more than 40 years, Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt, had been diagnosed with throat cancer.

"We were on tour in Plymouth and Rick had gone to see a specialist about his throat in the morning," he told me. "He came back to the venue at lunchtime, and just came over to me and said he’d been told it’s throat cancer, and that there’s a 99 per cent chance it was going to be the dangerous, potentially terminal kind.

“I was just stunned," Francis added. "He told me sort of matter-of-factly, and it all seemed unreal. I went and got some food from the canteen, and when I brought it back to the table the reality of the situation had obviously hit him, because he had just completely broken down.”

Thankfully within just a few weeks results came back from medical tests with the best possible news for Rick - that the cancer was not of the malignant variety. Amazingly, it seems, he'd beaten the odds by 99 to one.

More places to buy the book ...

Island Life: A History of Looe Island, is now also available from English Heritage, from The Guardian's bookshop, from The Telegraph's bookshop, from The Financial Times' online shop, and from She Magazine.

The book is also still available from Amazon.co.uk, Borders, Ingrams, Barnes and Noble, and from all good bookshops (ISBN 978-1-4116-8917-6). Or you can order it direct from publishers Lulu Press

Man Off The Telly

It’s a strange way to start a conversation by anyone’s standards, but I was hardly expecting conventional chat with the flamboyant octogenarian king of jazz, George Melly.

“I suffer from what the medical profession call senility,” Melly announces as he answers the telephone.

It’s difficult to know if he always answers the phone in this manner.

When he discovers he has a gentleman of the press on the line, he settles into a well-worn patter about how he’s willing to tell me everything about his life, he’ll strip it bare and lay it all out before me ... but if he doesn’t want to answer a question he’ll tell me so.

“I have had quite a drink problem over the years,” he admits, slurring his words a little (though whether for comic effect it’s difficult to say).

“I’ve had some terrible bouts of drinking,” he confesses, unprompted. “The last really bad one was three weeks ago. My accompanist had to get me home and drag me up the stairs.

“I had a terrible hangover the next day, and the television was on the floor – though it still worked, so I was happy enough.”

George coughs loudly, as I realise I’ve yet to get beyond introducing myself. “I’m just going to lay down on the bed while we talk,” he adds, as I wonder if I’ll ever get a question in.

George is playing York Theatre Royal next week, and it would be good to ask him about the show at some point.

“You see the problem is,” George continues, now apparently prostrate. “People keep buying me drinks. When I’m performing I try to be strict. I limit myself to two Irish whiskeys before the show, two in the interval, and two afterwards.

“But as soon as the show finishes, everyone wants to buy you a drink, and you can’t really say no.

“My wife tells me they’re probably trying to kill me, because they remember me young and I’m making them feel old. They would be happier about themselves if I was dead.”

There is a pause while George coughs again, so I decide it’s time to fire in a question – Tell me about the flamboyant suits George, how did that come about?

“I can’t always hear what people are saying down the telephone,” he says. “But I imagine you’re asking me about my politics. I was always an anarchist.”

Ok, I say, just happy to find myself in a two way conversation however disjointed – I believe that’s why you left the navy, because you were distributing anarchist pamphlets?

“Yes I was gay,” he says, answering whatever question he chooses to hear at the time. “And that was a dangerous thing to be when I was in the navy. After all in those days it was illegal. I never got done over, but I could well have been. Couldn’t I?”

When Liverpool-born George detects a hint of a scouse accent in my questions, he seems suddenly delighted. He reminds me that he is also from Liverpool, though, he quips with a chuckle, he thinks he was probably from a higher class.

Nevertheless he decides to call me la’ (a scouse abbreviation for lad) for the rest of the conversation.

As I continue firing questions to be met by a barrage of non-sequitus answers, it seems I will never find out about next week’s concert.

Perhaps the best way is simply to head to York for the show at the St Leonard’s Place venue on Thursday evening.

So what of the future of jazz, will it outlive your generation? I ask George as a Parthian shot.

“Oh,” George says apparently shocked. “I actually heard that one.”

There’s a brief pause as he considers an answer to an actual question.

“Jazz will never die, it needs to just wait until a hole appears,” George says enigmatically, before laughing loudly, and adding, “Now, I’m just laying down again for a bit, goodbye la’.”

OUT SOON: The Mole Of Edge Hill, by David Clensy

Published July 2006.
The Mole Of Edge Hill

Williamson's Tunnels remain one of Liverpool's most intriguing mysteries, some two centuries after they were constructed by the city's greatest eccentric, Joseph Williamson.

In the early years of the nineteenth century this rich merchant paid a secret army of men to dig a labyrinth that stretches for miles beneath the city.

In The Mole Of Edge Hill writer David Clensy presents a dual approach to understanding more about this singular character. The first half of the book is a short novel in which the author brings the eerie subterranean world to life, imagining what Williamson's life may have been like. In the second half of the book, after years of research, the writer presents the most in-depth history yet written of the real Mole Of Edge Hill. Published July 2006

Little White Shadows ...

I’ve got to be honest with you, I wasn’t really expecting to experience much in the way of paranormal activity during my weekend in Edinburgh.

Tipsey men in kilts and hen night parties with matching T-shirts were about as paranormal as I thought it would get.

And after two hours spent beneath the Royal Mile with wholly unconvincing psychics, I thought my predictions had been proven right.

But then all hell broke loose, with ghostly voices coming through on sound recordings, and a mass of "orbs" appearing on one of the digital photographs I had taken.

Click here for more details of my ghost hunting experiences.

OUT NOW: Island Life: A History Of Looe Island, by David Clensy

Published May 2006.
Island Life: A History of Looe Island

Looe Island, off the Cornish coast, enchants all who visit, with its beauty and tranquillity. But the island's history is full of mystery and intrigue.

In Island Life: A History of Looe Island, writer David Clensy reveals the island's many unknown secrets - from its early monastic inhabitants, to the sinister 18th century smugglers who used it as a place to land and stow their booty.

Discover how the island witnessed the opening shots against the Spanish Armada, and was bombed during the Second World War.

The author brings us up to date, with an affectionate portrait of the indomitable Atkins sisters, who lived on the island for more than 30 years, and explains how the island has been passed on to the care of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust. The book includes an in-depth interview with Babs Atkins, conducted just a few years before her death.

The book is available from Amazon.co.uk, Borders, Ingrams, Barnes and Noble, and from all good bookshops (ISBN 978-1-4116-8917-6). Or you can order it direct from publishers Lulu Press

Flashback: Bill Wyman

When he became the Stone that rolled away in 1993, Bill Wyman shocked fans by taking up remarkably sedate pastimes like amateur archaeology and memorabilia collecting.

By the time I interviewed him in 2004, he was enjoying musical success once again with his Rhythm Kings band. But hours earlier, he had shocked fans all over again, by announcing his retirement from the music industry.

Since leaving the Stones, his life had been an eclectic flurry of activity – apart from the archaeology and the memorabilia, he's also a restaurateur, painter, photographer, and even a settled family man. So why leave the music behind?

“I love playing live, but the four months on the road every year means I’m missing important milestones in my family’s life,” he explained.

Like the late George Harrison’s Travelling Wilburys, or Ringo’s All Stars, The Rhythm Kings drew on a pool of talent which had previously included the likes of Georgie Fame, Martin Taylor and Gary Brooker of Procol Harum. The final line-up included guitarist Albert Lee and pianist Mike Sanchez.

“It’s about doing the music for the fun of it,” Bill said, as he prepared for the final tour at his Suffolk home.

“It takes a lot to get me out of the house these days, and I only do The Rhythm Kings because I love the music. We’re not restrained by commercial ties, so we just play what we want. It’s like a group of mates jamming together.

“We can cover dozens of styles of music in a concert – anything from rock’n’roll to blues to jazz. That’s why I love it, and I think that’s why the audiences have such a good time. That’s why I left the Stones – I just got fed up with doing the same songs every time we got on stage.”

When he left Mick, Keith and co, back in 1993, Bill had endured a turbulent few years.

The 1990s had started badly when his ex-wife, Mandy Smith, received a £3.6m divorce settlement, even though they spent only eight weeks together during their marriage. Smith was still a teenager when they married in 1989.

It had also been a tough time professionally – with three major Stones tours sapping his energy between ’89 and ’91.

“I felt as if I’d spent most of my life on stage playing Jumping Jack Flash and Honky Tonk Women over and over,” he groaned. “I couldn’t see it changing in years to come. So I called it a day and I’ve never regretted the decision. The only regret is I didn’t pack it in earlier.”

With the Stones rolling off into the distance, Bill found time for his many other stifled pursuits, as well as setting up his London restaurant Sticky Fingers.

“But more than anything I wanted to spend some real time with my family,” he told me. “I have a beautiful wife and three beautiful daughters, who are nine, eight, and six. I didn’t want to miss the chance of growing up with them.

“I’d made that mistake back in the 60s with my son from a previous marriage. I can remember turning round one day and he’d just grown up. I was determined not to let that happen again.”

So how did the other members of the Stones react to his bombshell after more than 30 years as “the quiet one”?

“They were all shocked at first,” he said. “But afterwards, they were all lovely about it. Really supportive. I think they knew I was making the right decision for me. And we all keep in touch – they’re like family now after all these years. We meet up socially when we can, but there’s never any real chance of me playing with them again, and they know that. There’s no point.”

And do they ever get to The Rhythm Kings gigs?

“Yeah, some of them do,” he chuckled. “Charlie Watts comes to see us regularly. Me and Charlie are still really good mates. Keith lives in the States so he hasn’t got to see us. And Mick, well he always says he’ll come to see us, and never makes it. But then, that’s Mick.”

Bill looked back on his career with great fondness: “I am very proud of my time with the Stones. It was my life for such a long time, but I do feel that in the past 11 years I’ve been able to be successful on all kinds of other levels.”

His tastes in modern music might surprise rockers young and old. He really can’t get no satisfaction from contemporary Britpop: “I don’t like any of the stuff that’s coming up now as far as rock and pop is concerned," he said grumpily. "I don’t listen to any of it. I quite like that lad who’s trying to be Sinatra though, Jamie Cullum, and Katie Melua.”

Yol

So I’m working away in my familiar heady newsroom environment, when the phone rings.

It’s Yol, apparently, a "performance artist", who promises to "make people think about the issue of redevelopment" in a new exhibition/piece of performance art at the Red Gallery, Hull.

So I invite Yol to explain what it’s all about.

"I’m going to be drawing houses on the walls of the gallery with a marker pen for seven hours," he explains.

Ok ... why are you doing that then Yol?

"Well," Yol begins, before pausing for a moment to think. "I’m making a point about redevelopment in Hull."

What point is it you’re planning to make Yol?

"I want people to think about what’s happening with all this regeneration."

So are you against regeneration?

"No, it can be a good thing. But look at the Queen’s Court building – I don’t know anyone who could afford to live there."

Right, so you think some people could be priced out of their city?

"Yeah," Yol pauses again to think. "I don’t want to be negative about regeneration though, because obviously it’s a good thing too."

At some point around about here I begin wondering if Yol has really thought this all through.

"They’re naive images of houses drawn in one continual line for seven hours," Yol tells me. "I’ve been drawing these houses for years now, I've even had them tattooed on my back this week. It’s like an obsession."

Why?

"I don’t know," Yol admits, a little sheepishly.

No, but there must be a reason behind an obsession, I say, genuinely puzzled by this behaviour – how did it start?

"I was hitching around Europe years ago, and I slept under the Eiffel Tower," Yol recalls. "When I woke up in the morning, I started drawing these houses in the dust on the floor."

Why?

"I don’t know," Yol muses thoughtfully. "But I just got into it. I’ve just had one tattooed on my back too."

Yol, who has been living in Hull for seven years, seems uncertain about where he originates from. There’s a long pause on the line when I ask him.

"... I’m just from everywhere," he says eventually, sounding more confused than enigmatic (which seems to be the aim of all this).

Ok ... where were you born?

Another long pause, before Yol finally admits: "Rugby."

What is it with these artists – why can’t they answer anything directly.

So, it’s time to wrap up the interview. What’s your surname Yol?

"I don’t have one."

You don’t have a surname?

"No. I had my name changed officially so I’m just Yol?"

Ok. Why do so many artists do that these days I ask him, by this time a little impatient?

"I don’t know, do they? I’ve always been just Yol really."

Ok Yol. Good luck with the house thing – you’ve clearly got an important message to put across to the world.

Flashback: Paul Shane

It’s hard to speak to Paul Shane on the telephone and not imagine him wearing a sleeveless vest and sitting on his bed in a Maplins chalet, with Spike polishing his shoes on the other side of the room.

The persona of Ted Bovis in the classic Perry and Croft comedy Hi-De-Di was so like the real actor, it became difficult to tell them apart.

Like Ted, Paul prides himself on his working class roots and his powerful singing voice. He has the sharp, no-nonsense, Ted Bovis approach to a conversation, that comes from working down t’pit in Rotherham while his acting contemporaries were being trees at RADA.

And as I discovered when I interviewed him in December 2004, like many comedians a chat with him is somehow full of pathos.

“I love doing panto,” he chortled down the line. “It’s always a lot of fun, especially when you’re playing the dame. There’s something about that character that just seems to captivate the audience – she’s so much larger than life, I suppose."

But Paul quickly descended into telling me about the downsides to panto.

“It’s damned hard work,” he said. “You’re up there in the fun factory for hours each day, for weeks. It takes real stamina and devotion to keep it fresh all the way into the new year. Damned hard work."

Paul returned to his cheery self when the subject of Hi-De-Hi cropped up.

“Jimmy Perry and David Croft created these incredibly sympathetic characters – they could do comedy, but just as importantly they could do pathos," he said. "That’s what made them works of genius. They were gifts for us actors.”

Recently, Paul has devoted more time to straight acting, with roles in Doctors, Holby City and Emmerdale. “I’m very lucky,” he said. “I can do comedy and serious stuff, easily making the switch. I have a good face for both."

Paul gave another of his pauses, and sipped his drink, before adding: "They say beauty’s skin deep, it’s just that I was born inside out.”

But Paul believes it is important to not become too precious about the acting craft. “To me, it’s just a job,” he said. “I didn’t go into this young and I’ve known the real world. I did the working men’s clubs for more than 20 years and I worked down the mines before that.

“When you have that as your background, you can’t get too precious about acting.”

Flashback: Ray Galton

On a warm afternoon in August 2005, I sat down in a dark corner of the auditorium at York Theatre Royal with screenwriter Ray Galton - the man behind such legendary TV series as Steptoe and Son and Hancock's Half Hour.

The venue was about to host the world premiere of the Steptoe and Son stage show, and Ray was excited about the prospect of bringing Albert and Harold back to life.

"I often wondered what those characters must have been up to since we left them back in the 1970s,” he said with a distant smile. “I thought it was about time we paid them a visit again.”

“It is very exciting,” the 75-year-old veteran confided. “I’ve had something like this in the back of my mind for years, but now it seems to have come together quite quickly.

“The only stipulation I placed on it was that the old man must now be dead – I felt that would move it all on.

“And it made sense that Harold would have killed him. He was always threatening to, and it had to happen one day,” Ray grinned, as he revealed the horrors he’d devised for Steptoe’s yard.

“I imagine he threw a fire poker or something at the kazi door, and the old man opened it right at the critical moment and took a fatal blow.

“Harold fled to Brazil, where he’s spent the past 30 years cleaning out Ronnie Biggs’ swimming pool.

“So the play is set today, or maybe tomorrow,” he added, with a playful glint in his eye. “Harold has been drawn back, with some idea that Max Clifford will make him rich by selling his story.

“Somehow he manages to lock himself into the old house overnight, is haunted by his old man and spends the night having to explain why he killed him.”

Ray was convinced his characters could stand alone from the two late actors who defined them, Wilfred Brambell and Harry H Corbett.

“I always did think the characters were strong enough by themselves, although Harry and Willy brought something special to them,” he said.

In fact, Steptoe and Son was never meant to be a TV series. Ray and writing partner Alan Simpson (now retired) made their name writing for Tony Hancock, but when that job ended in the early 60s, their next commission was for a series of one-off plays for TV.

“One was about these father and son rag-and-bone men. The television executives liked it and thought it could make a series, but we weren’t keen, so we said we’d only do it if they could get Harry H Corbett and Wilfred Brambell.

“They were both known as very serious actors, and we asked for them because we thought they’d never say yes, but they did, so we had to go ahead. And they were right, it did work.”

But it came as something of a surprise for Shakespearean thespian Corbett when he saw the television studio. “He didn’t realise we’d be filming in front of a live audience,” Ray recalled.

“And when he saw the set for the first time he said, ‘it looks great, but what are all those chairs for?’ “I told him it’s where the audience will be, and he had a bit of a thespian moment – ‘oh, but I’ll have to completely rethink my delivery!’ he announced dramatically, before storming off.”

Corbett and Brambell were famous for feuding both on and off the set, but Ray says it was a relationship that started reasonably enough.

“I think it was later on that their relationship really deteriorated,” he said. “After the show had finished in the 70s, they went to do a theatre tour of Australia together. I think they must have been a bit short of cash to take it. But by that stage I believe they didn’t talk. Apparently they couldn’t even travel on the same plane.”

Flashback: Bob Geldof

Interviewing Bob Geldof is a famous challenge for any journalist.

His astonishing articulation, combined with what must be the shortest fuse in the history of human temperament, and the focus of an atomic grasshopper brain, make for a lethal combination, able to set interviewers sweating profusely and taking up smoking.

It's a combination that not only made him a suitably arrogant icon for the post-punk years, but also made him a formidable political lobbyist - able to bend the ear of the world's stoniest leaders.

The 1985 Live Aid concert, which he instigated and played a large part in organising, raised more than $245m for famine relief. And 2005's Live8 concerts forced the hand of G8 leaders to pledge an increase in aid to Africa of $25bn by the year 2010.

But in the wake of the biggest concerts the world had ever seen, Bob told me (in his typically exasperated style) that he was looking forward to getting back to a more normal existence.

"Fans can expect to see a lanky paddy whining on about his life," he told me when I asked him for details of his show, before breathing deeply, and finding a momentary calm to actually tell me about the set list for a few moments.

But Bob's calm breaks as quickly as it arrives.

"I won't do pantomime," he suddenly roared down the phone midway through his description of the gigs. "I won't do feckin' pantomime."

Time to change the subject I sensed. It worked for a while as I got him talking about his new solo career box set. But his anger bubbled up again within minutes.

"With all the Live Aid stuff I do, people do tend to forget I'm a songwriter," he said sullenly.

"There is a melancholy running through my songs, but that's just me," he said. "I've never been Captain Chuckles."

Well quite.

You'd think Geldof might be a little easier to interview than he is, given the fact he started his own career as a music journalist, returning from a brief time as a hack in Canada to set up his own music magazine Hot Press in Ireland.

"I told a journalist at the time that I planned to change the country with it," he said. "If my mates hadn't turned round and said let's start a band, that's what I'd still be doing," Bob admitted, before suddenly snapping, "That's it, we're done. Bye."

And, like a thousand journalists before me, I was left listening to the cleared tone of the line.

Alexei Sayle

I interviewed comedian-turned-writer Alexei Sayle this morning. I've interviewed him a couple of times now, and I always find it an enjoyable experience.

Not that he's a bundle of laughs. His conversation is littered with thoughtful sighs and pauses, which make him sound much more depressive than he probably is.

Alexei admits that the desire to imbue his work with a serious political message is probably a hang-over from his uncoventional upbringing as the son of two radical Communist party members in a working class Anfield street.

"The greatest mass murderer in the history of the world was hero-worshipped in my house when I was growing-up," Alexei told me.

"But from an early age I was able to see through my parents’ view of Stalin. I just saw him as a dictator who killed an awful lot of his own people.

"I think most writers tend to come from upbringings that have been slightly outside the norm. It encourages your mind, from an early age, to notice and study the things most people just think are everyday.

"But it’s no wonder I’ve grown up to be quite a serious sort of person."

Flashback: Rodney Bewes

There are few voices quite as distinctive as the slightly gloomy drawl of Rodney Bewes, the actor best known for his role as Bob in The Likely Lads.

To hear his voice on the other end of the telephone line is a very strange experience - it's sometimes hard to believe you're not actually talking to Bob Ferris.

When I spoke to him in May 2005, he was preparing to go on tour once again with his one-man show, Three Men In A Boat. Rodney adapted the show from the Jerome K Jerome comic novel of 1889, and had been touring around the country on and off, with his 1911 mahogany and oak boat towed behind his car, for 12 years.

“It’s a fantastic book,” he said, “one of the funniest ever written. The amazing thing is people find it funny all over the world.

“I’ve been touring with it since 1993. It’s just me on stage, with a dog on wheels and a beautiful 1911 mahogany and oak boat, which I drag behind my car as I travel all over the country with the show.”

I caught Rodney at a busy time, as he was also putting the finishing touches to his autobiography A Likely Story.

But Rodney didn’t find the writing process easy. “It nearly did me in to be honest,” he said, with his familiar maudlin twang. “It’s a very hard thing to do, because you have to relive all the bad stuff as well as the good stuff.

“When I was writing it I’d wake up in the night thinking why did I turn that play down 20 years ago, which had been such a big hit, and things like that.

“In the end, it took me four years to write, but I’m pleased with the end product. I’m just reading through the proofs now.

“It starts with me as a kid, laying in bed in Bingley, unable to go to school like the other kids because I had asthma.

“And it ends with the curtain coming down at the end of a production of Three Men In A Boat, so I cover pretty much everything.”

And there are many things you might not realise about Rodney Bewes. For example, Rodney helped Basil Brush get his own programme, as he wrote, produced and was the first co-presenter on The Basil Brush Show.

In fact, on one occasion Rodney’s mother warned him against accepting a movie with James Mason, because she feared it would jeopardise his working relationship with the puppet.

“She thought Basil Brush was more important than any international production,” he said.

But despite a varied career, Rodney is still best known as Bob Ferris, in Dick Clements and Ian La Frenais’ classic The Likely Lads and the 70s sequel Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads?

“I don’t mind people remembering me as Bob. It’s just nice to be remembered for something so good. A lot of actors are remembered for rubbish. Look at poor old David Jason,” he added with an impish chuckle.

“No, actors can often get a bit self-important, saying they don’t like to be remembered for things they did more than 30 years ago. But I don’t see it like that at all.”

Filmed between 1964 and 1966, 20 episodes were made of the story of the two Newcastle lads trying to get on in life, of which only seven remain in the BBC archive – so much material from that era has been lost forever.

In fact, those seven were originally junked by the BBC, and only turned up thanks to recent searches through foreign film vaults.

But the characters of Bob and Terry were truly established as comedy gold with the 1973 sequel Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?

“I would reprise my role as Bob again tomorrow if Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais asked me to,” Rodney told me.

“The genius was always in their writing and I think it would be great fun to see Bob and Terry getting older.

“But I know that Jimmy (James Bolam) would never do it,” he added, with a hint of regret. “But that’s absolutely his prerogative. Personally I’d leap at it.”

Rodney’s relationship with his screen buddy, James Bolam, has often been reported as being at best troubled, at worst non-existent. But Rodney dismissed the suggestion as nonsense.

“It’s a load of rubbish,” he grumbled. “Jimmy and I have always been really good pals. We couldn’t have spent so many hours filming together if we hadn’t have been.

“It’s all journalistic nonsense I’m afraid. It can get them a double page spread in the Daily Mail if they say we don’t get on,” he added.

I point out I was prompted to ask by the phrase “his troubled relationship with James Bolam”, which appears on the blurb of his autobiography, on the Random House website.

“God, that really is annoying,” he groaned. “It’s my book, and they don’t even show me the blurb before they publish it.”

Rodney gave an exasperated sigh down the phone line.

“There is a sense of losing control of your work when you’re writing a book like this,” he added.

“It’s going to be serialised in the Daily Mail, which is great, but I had to sign to say they can write whatever headlines they want. It’s all stuff like that.”

Rachel Laurence

My interviews seem to return to a feminist angle all the time lately. Actress Rachel Laurence, who played Cynthia Lennon in the movie John And Yoko: A Love Story, talked to me this afternoon about her experiences of adapting a little known story to the stage.

Lady Molly Of Scotland Yard, which visits York Theatre Royal later this month, was originally penned in 1910 by Baroness Orczy (pictured), her of Scarlet Pimpernel fame.

Lady Molly is a comedy detective who gets involved in solving a series of mysteries. But did the police force really have women detectives in 1910?

"Well they had women working for the police," Rachel, who is something of a crime fiction expert, explained. "But they were there to deal with children, and in case ladies needed searching.

"So no," she added, after a moment's thought. "I suppose Lady Molly was probably the world's first female detective."

Another mystery solved then.

Flashback: George Lowe

When the conquest of Everest was finally accomplished for the first time in 1953, the world applauded the superhuman achievement. The names Hillary and Tenzing were written into history books, and have become familiar as two of the all-time great adventurers.

But the ascent was a team effort, and New Zealander George Lowe was the third man of the expedition.

When I was lucky enough to meet Lowe in May 2003, he was just a year away from his 80th birthday, but I was to discover the ascent of Everest was just one chapter in his life of adventures.

From his garden perched on a hillside overlooking the green canopy of Derbyshire’s Derwent Valley, the Kiwi struck a tall, wiry figure. His beard was white, and his eyes peered fixedly from his weather-worn face.

Inside his home, George’s study was peppered with Everest memorabilia, photographs and books.

The softly-spoken former schoolteacher walked to the window and picked up a small piece of rock.

“This was taken from the summit,” he said with a smile. “From the roof of the world.”

George’s mind seemed to drift back to that day – May 28, 1953 – when he stood as a 29-year-old on the windswept South Col, just 700ft from the summit of Everest.

The British-led expedition was within grasping point of the goal that had eluded generations of climbers.

George and four others prepared the final camp on the mountainside, while Edmund Hillary – Ed to George – and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay set off on the final climb that would see the Union Jack hoisted on the highest peak on the planet.

“It was the big one,” George said. “It had never been done – it was a real first, and so we all wanted the expedition to be a success.

“And for it to be a success, we had to think as a team. There was no room for thinking about yourself.”

Which is why George insisted there was no sense of personal disappointment in not joining Hillary and Norgay on the final approach.

“I really wasn’t disappointed to get so close to the summit without actually reaching it,” he said.

“My job was to be there when Ed and Tenzing arrived back. Ed is a good friend, and for me it was just great to see him reach the top. We were a team, and it was a real team achievement.”

As the official photographer on the trip, George documented the climb and produced the iconic image of the expedition – of Hillary and Tenzing setting off for the summit.

“When I brought the pictures back they were taken by the Royal Geographical Society,” George explained, with a hint of bitterness. “So I have never seen a penny for them.”

George returned from the mountain to a life of celebrity. On what was his first visit to England he was awarded an OBE by the Queen.

“We were hailed as heroes,” he said. “We were paraded out all over the place. Then the New Zealand government decided they wanted to parade us out too, so we were flown over there.

“It took 10 days to fly to New Zealand in those days, but when we got there we received another tremendous welcome. Then we were flown to North America, and so on it went for months.”

But George, who never appeared fully comfortable about being interviewed throughout my morning with him, clearly wasn’t a man to enjoy a celebrity lifestyle.

Just a couple of years after the climb, both he and Hillary returned to the business of taking on the challenges of the great outdoors, and joined a team intent upon another world first – the crossing of Antarctica.

“It wasn’t a case of having to do something to compete with the Everest climb,” he explained. “We were just asked to take part in the Antarctic trek, so we did it.

“We were lucky in that there were two great journeys left on Earth to tackle, and we were in the right place at the right time.”

Despite his modesty, the three-year trek across the ice saw him and Hillary enter the history books once again – with the first crossing of the fearsome expanse.

“It was tough,” he said, looking up at a map of the ice-filled wasteland on his study wall. “Even before we started, like Shackleton himself, our ship was trapped in an ice floe for weeks. But luckily we came out of it in one piece – it was just a case of sitting it out.”

And George left his mark on the landscape – the icy Mount Lowe was named in his honour following the success of the mission.

George’s life of adventure did not even end there. He later went on to travel the world widely, and spent a decade teaching in a Chilean school – where he developed an acquaintance with General Pinochet, whose son attended his class.

When asked what Pinochet was actually like, George’s response was simply a raised eyebrow.

But for all of his adventures, the Everest ascent clearly remained the focal point of his life. A photograph of George with Hillary and two Sherpa guides took pride of place in his study.

“It was taken in 1952,” he told me. “It was the year before the big climb, and we had become friendly with these two guys.

“When we returned to Nepal the following year we found that they had both taken ill and died. That was when Ed decided the people of the Himalayas needed to be helped.”

Hillary later set up the Sir Edmund Hillary Himalayan Trust to support local people. As chairman of the UK branch of the trust, George and his wife Mary had for years devoted much of their free time to the cause.

“We’ve given something back because there is no doubt that we wouldn’t have made the summit without their help,” George explained.

Clearly not a man to miss a fund-raising opportunity for the Trust, he then proceeded to flog me a couple of the Trust’s mountain-themed calendars. With a hint of mischievousness in his eyes, and to Mary’s apparent embarrassment, he added: “They’re a fiver each, but you’re a journalist, you can afford to double that.

“They’re good ones,” he added, as I opened my wallet. “They don’t have a year on them, so you can use them over and over again.”

And sure enough, George’s calendar still takes pride of place on my bedroom wall today – a reminder for me of a morning with one of the most inspirational men I’ve ever met.

Diana Kent

You don't realise just how much pressure actors feel themselves under when they step out on to the stage.

As the snow started to fall outside this afternoon, I sat down at my desk and called actress Diana Kent of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Diana is currently among an RSC group touring the country with the London Sinfonia, combining Mendelssohn’s musical interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with excerpts from Shakespeare's play performed by the troupe.

Diana, whom you would recognise from movies such as Elizabeth and Heavenly Creatures, and TV dramas such as Band Of Brothers, told me the actors have been surprised to meet a different kind of audience.

"The classical music audience is a very intelligent crowd," she said. "And they seem much less judgemental than a theatre audience. You can sense that they’re not sitting there thinking "okay, so how’s she going to tackle this" all the time.

"So as actors we’re much more relaxed about the performance, because there isn’t that sort of pressure."

Flashback: Mo Mowlam

Of course, there are many days, like today, when I don't have anybody's name scribbled down in my diary to interview. I figured it might be interesting if I took the opportunity of these lulls to look back at interesting earlier encounters.

In November 2004 I picked up the phone and called Dr Mo Mowlam, ahead of an "audience with" style show she was to give at York Theatre Royal later that month.

She was one of a very rare breed during her career in Parliament – a genuinely popular politician. Her frankness and gentle charm attracted respect from people of all political persuasions, while her tactful diplomacy will go down in history as one of the binding factors in Ireland’s long walk to peace.

Her personal struggle, recovering from a brain tumour while continuing to address her ministerial responsibilities, became a very public affair, as she battled fatigue, hair loss and the weight-gaining effects of steroid-based treatments.

She died in August 2005, the summer after my interview.

For a woman who had spent months knocking Ireland's toughest politicians into shape, her voice took me by surprise as she was passed on to the line.

She spoke with a tiny, fragile voice, that sounded almost child-like in its gentle shrillness. As she spoke her frailty also became apparent. She was breathless throughout the interview, panting quietly between answers, as if she was talking after just running up a couple of flights of stairs.

But she remained steadfast in her tireless approach to life.

“Although I’ve retired from parliamentary politics, I certainly haven’t retired from politics," she told me. “I do a lot of campaigning work for charities and I write a lot of political pieces for newspapers. I don’t think I could ever retire from being politically motivated.”

She had even taken to writing an agony aunt column for a lad’s mag called Zoo.

“I always get interesting questions to answer for that," she chuckled. "Often it’s sexual stuff, but I always give it plenty of thought before putting pen to paper.”

But Mo will forever be remembered for the more serious job of Northern Ireland Secretary, which she was given after the 1997 General Election, and which saw her negotiating skills put to good use in achieving what would eventually become the Good Friday Agreement.

“My time in Ireland was very stressful,” she admitted. “My brain tumour had come the year before I went out there, but I’d had the all-clear before the end of 1997.

“And in Ireland I had to devote a lot of time and energy to the job. I lived in Hillsborough Castle itself for a couple of years, so the work was pretty much constant.

“My role was simple in a way – I was trying to bring the two sides together all the time and I was determined to put everything I had into it."

Mo was clearly disillusioned with the Government’s conduct over Iraq by this time.

Although a Basil Fawlty-esque phone call from her PR man a few minutes before the interview suggested an unwillingness to discuss Iraq – roughly along the lines of “Don’t mention the war” (I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it ... etc.), Mo didn’t take a lot of coaxing once she was on the line.

“After 9/11, I think we needed to do something,” she said. “But I was very disappointed when they went to war in Iraq, without UN backing. I believe strongly you don’t bomb or shoot terrorists into submission. If you do that you just act as a recruitment agency for the terrorists.

“If I learned anything in Ireland, it is that the only way to tackle terrorism is through dialogue. You have to talk to all the parties involved – including the terrorists.

“But when I suggested we should be talking to Al Qaida last year, I was laughed down,” she added with a resigned sigh.

Pam Gems

Yesterday afternoon I settled myself down at my desk for a phone interview with feminist playwright Pam Gems.

The author of Piaf and Spencer, among other notable pieces for the stage, has just penned a new play for York Theatre Royal, Mrs Pat, which tells the story of the formidable Edwardian actress Mrs Patrick Campbell (pictured).

“She was a bit of a bitch,” the 80-year-old playwright told me, with unexpected frankness. “She certainly wasn’t an easy woman to work with, by all accounts.”

But her vibrant personality made her a superstar of the stage in her day – on a par with the likes of Sarah Bernhardt.

George Bernard Shaw was a close friend – he even created the role of the Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle for her in Pygmalion. She became the first ever Eliza when the play was premiered in 1914, despite the fact she was 49-years-old at the time.

Fourteen years after the death of her first husband in 1900, Campbell became the second wife of George Cornwallis-West, a dashing writer previously married to Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill, but she continued to use “Mrs Patrick Campbell” as her stage name.

“It is interesting as a feminist, that this great feminist icon used her husband’s name as her stage name,” Pam said. “But I actually find it rather endearing. She made the choice to use it herself, and she did so as a way of displaying her love for her late husband – which is quite touching really.”

And what of the progress of feminism during Pam's four decades as a writer?

"I've been in the feminist movement for many years," she said. "And some things were achieved along the way. But there's still a long way to go. I still want to see a creche in every place of employment."

In the beginning

When Philip Graham, editor of the Washington Post, coined the description of journalism as "the first rough draft of history" in 1963, he probably had something more ground-breaking in mind.

As a feature writer on a British regional newspaper, my life couldn't be further removed from the rugged glamour of the war reporters who earned the title of "draft historians".

But the great benefit of working as a journalist, even at this modest level, is that you do get to meet some fascinating people - ranging from d-list celebs valiantly trying to push their waning careers, to iconic figures - people whose hands really have touched the turning pages of history.

In recent months I've interviewed scores of interesting people - a real mixed bag of personalities, including Alan Bennett, Sir Bob Geldof, Britt Ekland, Ray Galton, Jacqueline Wilson, Quentin Blake, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, John Godber, Bill Wyman, Rodney Bewes, and I was honoured to be one of the final journalists to interview the late Mo Mowlam.

Every interview is a different experience. Sometimes I have to travel across the country to meet these famous faces, often I just have to pick up a telephone. Sometimes it's an amazing, heartwarming experience, sometimes it's a nightmarish struggle.

The features appear in the newspaper the next day, and the day after that they become the proverbial fish and chip wrapping paper. I don't have time to ponder the experience for very long before I have to move on to setting up the next interview.

Often I think it would be nice to record these experiences for posterity.

And that is the purpose of this 'blog. To record my curious existence bouncing from one interview to the next - a kind of organised name dropping, and maybe even, for what it's worth, a first rough draft of my history.