This week: The Young’uns have a minor run in with the police. We enter the mind of Sean Cooney as he journeys into a post-apocalyptic folk festival. What do Viking headwear, table tennis, elephants and the TARDIS all have in common? There’s live music from Gilmore & Roberts from Chester Folk Festival, and Sam Carter collaborates with the Young’uns. Plus we pay tribute to an old friend of the Young’uns Podcast, Martin Nesbitt, who died two weeks ago. We remember him through his comedy music and stories.

Download the 116th Young’uns Podcast here.

The Young’uns have been involved in some inadvertent spying. We reveal some covert recordings taken from backstage at a recent Young’uns gig. Find out what venue staff honestly think about the Young’uns, plus they become extremely vexed by a mysterious voice. Sean Cooney introduces us to Baby Sam, who wiggles, giggles, skips, slips, jumps and dives through a crazy world of monsters, snakes and dinosaurs. The Young’uns in the mix returns, mixing a sea shanty with the Prodigy. And this week’s guests are Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker, recently signed to navigator, whose album Fire and Fortune is released in July. We play a couple of tracks from the forthcoming album and chat to them about their music.

Download the 115th Young’uns Podcast here.

This week, the Young’uns are getting a bit shirty with each other. We’ve advice for anyone seeking to end their lives in a fun and novel way. David Eagle showcases his cheaply and cynically produced football song that is destined to make him a millionaire. Puns this week feature whales, Jesus and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Other subjects covered include the Holiday Inn Express, and nipples. Musicwise, we’ve got live Young’uns and a track from Gavin Davenport’s latest album, and Gavin joins us on the phone to talk about music and phone apps.

Download the 114th Young’uns Podcast here.

Young’uns podcast fans, your time of grieving is over. We’re back with the first podcast of 2013, and the first in our new weekly series.

This week, we speak to journalist, author and folk music blogger Emma Hartley about her book Did David Hasselhoff
End the Cold War? and she reveals information about her work in progress. We talk cats with Jim Molyneux from 4Square
and The Old Dance School. There’s a spontaneous Young’uns in the mix courtesy of Sean
Cooney’s malfunctioning car stereo. We reveal the football song with a difference. We discuss a rather unusual pulling technique witnessed on a London
train, and we’ve anecdotes about supermarkets and the National Portrait Gallery. Plus there’s music from 4Square and some live Young’uns.

Download the 113th Young’uns Podcast here.

 
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Download the audio version of this blog post here.

At the end of BBC 3’s Russell Howard’s good news, the continuity announcer said: “; And more brand new funny on 3 next Tuesday at ten, as Nick Grimshaw hosts a new panel show, Sweat The Small Stuff, making a big deal out of the little things in life, such as should I put the milk in the tea before or after I’ve taken out the tea bag? Stuff like that.”

Well, understandably desperate to discover what the panellists’ consensus was on this subject, I immediately went onto the Internet to see whether there were any spoilers. But alas not. So I suppose I’m just going to have to try and be patient and wait until tonight to find out what Nick Grimshaw and a couple of radio presenters from Kiss FM who I’ve never heard of have to say about when they deem it correct to put the milk in their tea.

I have booked the day off work today, just so that I can mentally prepare myself for the programme. After I’ve published this blog I’m going to do some yoga and some meditation so that I’m in the right frame of mind for the show. I’m starting to think I should have booked the following day off as well, just in case I need some recovery time if one of the panellists says something particularly revelatory or radical. I think I’m pretty liberal and open-minded when it comes to opinion on hot beverages, but perhaps I’ll be surprised and someone will shatter all my preconceptions.

It’s things like this that inspire me to keep trying to develop a presenting career. Maybe one day I’ll be famous enough to get booked to be on shows like this. After all, I happen to have some startling, paradigm shifting philosophies regarding milk in tea, and don’t get me started with my theories on coffee.

Well, I suppose I better go and prepare myself mentally and physically for the programme. Sweat The Small Stuff is on BBC3 at 10 PM tonight. And before you have a nervous break down, if you’re reading this after 10 pm, fear not, you can watch it on the IPLAYER. I’ll be doing both. I’ll watch it live while following all the Twitter and Facebook comments about the show. Then I’ll watch it again on IPLAYER, as I’ll no doubt find new insights and hidden nuances that I missed the first time round. Then I’ll download it and watch it in slow motion, just to make sure I’ve definitely not missed anything.

I’d normally make a cup of tea at this time of the day, but I don’t feel confident enough to do it; not until I find out from Nick Grimshaw when I should be adding the milk. Public service broadcasting is still very much alive.

New Young’uns Podcast should be about a week away.

This is yet another first episode of a new project. This is a pilot that may go further at some point, but I thought I’d put it up on my website for you, meaning that if it doesn’t get taken up then at least it hasn’t been a total waste.

David Eagle’s Blind Spot is a portrayal of how ordinary, everyday events can be suddenly transformed into the extraordinary, simply because of being blind. It is a light hearted, humorous look at attitudes to disability, and the unusual ways in which people interact with me as a result of my blindness.

This particular episode is a re-done, dramatised version of my blog post From Chickens to Pelicans.

This is just a pilot episode, so I won’t be releasing them on a weekly basis (despite what the introduction says), although I may do some more at some point, regardless of whether it gets picked up or not.

Download David Eagle’s Blind Spot, Episode 1, here.
In other news: I’ve updated the Clips section of my site, so that there are some more presenting clips, taken from Young’uns and Southside Podcasts. I’ve also removed the Southside Podcast link from the homepage, because it’s getting a bit antiquated now. But the archive is still there if you should ever want it.

And finally: If you’re reading this before Friday April 12, you should try and listen to the amazing 45 minute radio drama from David Nobbs, the creator of Reginald Perrin; it’s called Silent Nights. It’s currently available on the BBC IPlayer
here.

Well, that’s quite a bit for you to be getting on with. Enjoy.

Rarely does a day go by without me overhearing a conversation that I become absorbed in. Sometimes, I have become so captivated by someone else’s conversation that I have inadvertently missed my stop on the bus or the train. I find There’s something magical about entering these unknown worlds, unbidden and unobserved. I can’t help myself. I might be reading a book or listening to a podcast, and my attention will gradually begin to shift from here … to there: to the people behind me on the train arguing, or the couple in the café presumably on a first date … I will inevitably give up trying to concentrate on my book. That story can always be revisited, but the story taking place right now, over there … that is fleeting, there are no repeats, not available on-demand, there is no rewind facility. And so I become absorbed in this new, exciting, organic story, which has never taken place in this same way before, and will never do so in this same way again. It’s magical, free theatre, unless you miss your stop on the train, in which case it’s potentially quite costly theatre.