At the recent opening of the new Butterfly World in St Albans (thoroughly to be recommended unless having butterflies the size of side-plates landing on your head is too disturbing!), I met a reporter from Radio Verulam, the local community radio station Elspeth Jackman. The radio station was supporting the event and promoting their programmes. So, naturally, I pressed Elspeth on the existence or otherwise of a folk programme on the station. There isn’t one currently apparently but there is no reason why there couldn’t be.
However, Elspeth did mention that she produced a programme that was a bit like Desert island discs, called ‘Tracks of My Life’. Now, I don’t know about you but I’ve always fantasised about being on Desert Island discs, so an invitation to join her and send my personal delights out into the ether, was too much to turn down.
So, on Sunday 23rd May, I set off for a sweaty studio on a baking hot day, to give Radio Verulam and the populace of Hertfordshire and many places beyond, the benefit of my CD collection. If my sat-nav (or me operating it) hadn’t had a senior moment, I might even have arrived on time! However, Elspeth was very forgiving and I was able to punctuate my life story with the various relevant tracks – from Fairport’s early version of She Moves Through the Fair, through Karine Polwart’s version of Mirk mirk is this midnight hour and Gabriel Yacoub’s Le Navire de Bayonne, and ending up with two of the latest mixes from our soon to be released album The Bite.
The doing of the programme was great fun but the selection of the 11 tracks was agony – what no Dick Gaughan, no La Bamboch, no Genticorum – I’m staying on the mainland thanks!
The programme went out on June 6th over a two-hour slot and Elspeth was very kind and allowed me to plug our forthcoming gig at the St Albans Folk Festival quite a few times. I got the distinct impression that she wasn’t a huge fan of folk music but she was very professional at not showing it on air.
