"I like Andrew and I like his poetry but why didn't they give that job to a Sheffield poet, or me?"

Ian McMillan, poet, singer, broadcaster and Barnsley fan is in Sheffield for the day.

He's been to Meadowhall to tell a group of children about the Year Of Reading initiative and now he's in the city centre to talk about writing, bell-ringing and his uncle Charlie.

Small, grey-haired and bespectacled in lecturer's baggy checked shirt, black jacket and jeans with turn-ups, he walks across Sheaf Square outside the railway station with a bag on his shoulder and a box under his arm.

Slightly nervous and hesitant on first meeting, he's soon into his stride with tales from building sites, Have I Got News For You and pledging his undying love for the Green Un.

All in that deep Darfield accent as thick as chip-shop gravy, great with singing, even better on poetry.

"You know there must be a spot somewhere between Birdwell and Grenoside where people stop saying 'thee' and 'thou' and start saying 'dee' and 'dah,'" said 52-year-old Ian who still lives in Darfield with his wife Catherine.

"There was a bloke who wrote to the Barnsley Chronicle saying that Sheffield people don't say 'dee' and 'dah' but they do. The thing about accents is that they do change within a few hundred yards, they might not be quite as strong as they used to be everywhere but they are surviving."

As he is himself, very nicely From an £800 a year writer's grant from Yorkshire Arts in 1981 to regular Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4 slots, appearances on BBC 1's comedy flagship Have I Got News For You and the highbrow Newsnight Review on BBC 2, he's poet in residence at Barnsley Football Club, Northern Spirit Trains and Humberside Police has written comedy for radio and plays for the stage and is currently presenting The Verb on Radio 3, doing solo gigs and gigs with cartoonist Tony Husband and musician Luke Goss and writing weekly columns for The Yorkshire Post and The Barnsley Chronicle.

Ian McMillan has come a long way.

His autobography, Talking Myself Home: My Life in Verses is coming out in the autumn and the author hopes to be reading extracts at Sheffield's Off The Shelf Festival in October.

For the moment though he's glad to be working near home for the day.
"Coming to Sheffield was always a big day out for us," said father of three Ian.

"My dad was company secretary at Hadfield, Cawkwell and Davidson, an architect in Broomgrove Road, Sheffield. We would go shopping in Wombwell once a week, Barnsley once a month and Sheffield once a year.

My uncle Jack had a house in Hillsborough and it was always a big trip to go and see him.

"Sheffield was the big city, that was always the pull. But you wouldn't know the place now with all the changes, it's hard to remember what was there before."

Although he spends part of his week in London, commuting via train from Doncaster, he is resolutely a Darfield lad and will always be so.

"I won' live anywhere else now. Someone from the BBC phoned me the other week to see if I would come into the studio and talk about life in Barnsley. They said they would send a car round to pick me up.
"I asked if they knew where I lived and they said no, which part of London s it?

"They couldn't believe I actually lived there. They were shocked. "Oh I thought you were like Parkinson, I didn't know you actually still LIVED there!' It's as though certain places are comedy places to live and Barnsley seems to be one of them.

"I sometimes feel like the token northerner when I'm on a TV panel but at least I am there having a say. It's only a bad thing when people are patronising, which they aren't usually."

What does he like to do when he isn't working?

Nothing.

"Because I spend so much of my life working and rushing here and there I just like to sit on the settee when I've got time. I love to read newspapers, I bring loads of them home and telly wife I found them on the train. I like the Green Un especially. I buy it every week. It's a great feeling to think of all those people working on a Saturday afternoon to bring you the reports and results, I love it.

"I always wake up at 4.30 in the morning. That's when I'm freshest and I get a lot of work done then but it means that I've had it towards the end of the day."

When will it end?

"My wife said to me that you don't retire from this type of work and I suppose you don't. But I'm 52 now and I might start and slow down. I'm thinking about doing less over the next few years."
More on next page