TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

I've just seen this on the SDE website, posted by one Colin Harper:

I hope it won’t seem too ‘Alan Partridge’ to mention this, but there is a documentary about me (!) – covering box set curating, music book writing and music making – on BBC NI this Sunday (18 February) at 10:30pm. It will be available nationally in the UK via iPlayer for 30 days after that.

Having curated the Horslips box set ‘More Than You Can Chew’ for Madfish, mastered by Cormac O’Kane, Horslips mainman Barry Devlin became extraordinarily fascinated with my world – finding great fun in a lot of the local musical characters around me and Cormac.

He insisted on producing this documentary, roped Cormac in to direct it and convinced BBC NI to broadcast a 55-minute cut of it.  The way I looked at it was this: I’ve spent 30+ years chronicling the musical ancient world, so when a character from that ancient world (fervently) insisted it was my turn, I said ‘okay…’ – and then ‘let go’ of any attachment to it.  In a way, the 55 minutes is a ‘curating’ of my world – it’s Barry and Cormac’s impression of it, tempered by a bit of trimming from BBC NI.

I gave interviews for it, helmed a couple of two-way interviews with people and took part in some musical performances – but I haven’t been party to any editorial choices and I haven’t seen it myself.  A few musical heroes are in it – John McLaughlin (!), Johnny Marr, Ralph McTell, Andy Powell, Martin Hayes – and the maestro of music biography, Mark Lewisohn.

If anyone’s interested, here’s the iPlayer link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001wmjw

Excellent.  He's always been one of the good guys.  Wonder if it mentions the FC Boots box?  Looking forward to this.