Urban Tiger Radio

Hi. This is a brief introduction to the people who made 'Networx' at the Doncaster Arts Centre the great success that it was.

This episode of Kelham Island Discs features Howard Swindells, self-penned musician and lyricist whose alter ego is the driver of a Mobile Library in the north of Scotland. Howard writes about the people he meets and those who are most important in his life, as in 'My Old Lady & Me', written as a Valentine present to his wife. Howard is a mountain runner and trains every day while not out intimidating other motorists on Scotland's famous single track highland roads.

I hope this poem shows vividly that there's more to a teapot than a lid and a spout. Bomber's Moon is set during the Sheffield Blitz of the 12th. and 15th. of December 1940. Much of the City Centre and the residential areas were destroyed by raids from the Luftwaffe. There is a ground-gaining theory that in their attempt to destroy Sheffield's capacity to provide high quality steel for the war effort, they found their Radio Beacon location system distorted by the British War Department technicians and were fooled into thinking that they were bombing the East End factories. No-one told the Civilian population. In total over 660 people were killed, 1,500 injured and 40,000 made homeless in two nights of bombing.

Ever wonder where we came from? Or where we are going to? Whalesong tells us that the thoughts we believe are our own are actually a shared legacy and if instead of just listening we tried to understand, we might all get there together. Put on your headphones, close your eyes, and walk out onto a night beach lit only by a wish for the stars...

Hi again, another composite podcast from Urban Tiger. This time up we have Paul Middleton and his Angst Band, a blast from the past from 'Poke' and one from even further back from me

No. 2, An interview with the fabulous Andy Whitehouse, is a welcome addition to my 'Kelham Island Discs' podcasts. For those who don't know, Kelham Island was once at the industrial Heart of Sheffield. The steel production and casting took place down the East End where Hitler failed to bomb them, preferring our town centre instead. I don't know why he did that, the pubs weren't that bad... But the Kelham Island area was the Heart of the engineering section, where the raw steel was actually made into something useful that we could throw back at Hitler! Nowadays, the factories are becoming up-market apartments for overpaid hamsters and students with well-off parents, but having said that, the pubs around there are certainly springing back to life. Not least 'The Gardeners Rest' on Neepsend Lane... of which I own a share! Go and buy beer! Make me rich!

Well, here’s me playing catch-up with Welsh Geoff among other things and including ‘My Camera’ and ‘Lafayette’s Dog’, two tracks from a recently re-discovered 1997 CD (Life Blood) by ‘The Buffalo Brothers’, Allan Wilkinson and John Crisp, two lovely lads from Doncaster who soundly beat me in a songwriting competition back in around 1996. You won’t hear their tracks anywhere else but here now. I’m reliably informed that they don’t play these days. That’s a real shame… but if anyone knows where they are… urbantigerradio@gmail.com would love to hear from you.

A darkly comedic, very tongue in cheek fantasy about Connie Williams, Musician Extraordinaire, Legend in his Own Lunchtime with the least faithful wife a man could wish for. In search of some muse to bolster his own ego, Connie finds something that will strip away all of ours... Inspired by a picture of a church organ bearing a vast array of 'Stops' with names that sounded like a Wagnerian Fantasy, I tried to fit as many into the story as I could. In the end, I achieved something like linguistic contortionism... and had to give up.

This is the first of my 'Kelham Island Discs' series where I interview local musicians, poets and writers who specialise in performing their own works. Today's podcast is an interview with Welsh Geoff, a well known and greatly enjoyed performer on the Sheffield Folk Scene. His songs are often quirky, but uniquely Welsh (as you might expect) and if you want to hear more or buy a CD please contact Geoff directly on www.welshgeoff.co.uk Listen & Enjoy

This... is a culinary tour through the Heart, Hopes, Dreams and Wishes of a lonely middle-aged Chef. Is it this time? Does she by now have the right ingredients?

This is a recording of a fascinating blend of original music and poetry that Martin & I held at The Harlequin on Johnson St., Sheffield shortly before the demise of the pub itself. I don't think we were responsible for that, but who knows? Listen... and make your own mind up.

Hi again. This is a composite podcast composed of a brief travelogue and quirky guide to Gdansk in Poland, a short story by the title of Obtuse and a song from Roy Blackman. These elements all have a connection, see if you can spot what it is... I call the picture 'The Face of Wonder'. It is another of those lovely pictures you never set out to take...

This weeks Podcast is a sensitive Short Story titled ‘A Twist of Glass’, from my collection, Firelight on Dark Water… Tales of the Warm and Wonderful. I didn’t think too much about this story after I had written it. In fact, it hid amongst the dross on my computer for years before I took it out and read it again. Then it made me cry. (No, it’s not that bad, I’m just a soppy old sod.) It’s a story about all the daftness that surrounds young love… the myths that we grow up with from the playground about how it will be and all our dreams of finding that perfect someone and how they will fill our lives to capacity and love will thrum our hearts like the strings on a double bass. All true. And it all happens. But none of it is as good as the anticipation of seeing that one truly undeniable sign that this is the one… that this person is the culmination of your teenage hopes and dreams… or as devastating as the worry that you are not going to be strong enough to deal with it. Thomas needn’t have worried.

‘Tick Tock, said The Penguin’ represents a moment of great sadness… not mine, but that of others, and yet despite that I could not fail to be touched in a way that has stayed with me all my life. Strangely, what touched me was not a presence, but a hollowness, an absence, a place waiting to be filled between two young and brightly expectant lives, two people who lived up to their moment in time in a happily moving, unashamed manner. But Life is a wheel. And wheels turn….

Hi. This weeks Podcast includes three highly entertaining songs and poems from Roy Blackman, Rotherham's own Man of Memory. Roy can remember the dates, times, teams members and score of any Cup Final you choose to name, among many other things, but has been known to forget where he last put down his sandwich... Those who know him love him dearly. I hope this short compilation demonstrates why.

With his work recorded by the likes of Tony Christie and Richard Hawley, Martin Bragger unaccountably remains one of the world's best as yet undiscovered singer/songwriters. His lyrics are pure poetry, straight from the heart of everyone. His touch is so light yet so deep you begin to think that these are YOUR songs, not his...

During World War One, young men of all classes were encouraged to join up to the Armed Forces by various means. One such was the 'Recruiting Sergeant' who bought them beer and regaled them with great tales of valour. Another was the shaming force of peer pressure, the intimation that anyone who didn't sign up was ultimately a coward. Have we learned better since? I leave that to you...

Hi. This weeks Podcast is 'Fishing', where I query a perennial problem related to those who persist in 'worm-drowning' or 'water-thrashing' as a hobby.... Just who is catching who...?

Included in 'The Train' CD, this is a short memoir of the week my life changed forever, not necessarily for better. Pivotal moments in your life aren't always your fault, they just seem like it when you are young. However they occur, it's the way you embrace them that counts...

I read somewhere a long time ago that Poetry and Science Fiction are almost mutually exclusive. I never believed it, although I will subscribe that the difference between Poetry and Futuristic Fiction may well be that one describes emotions that predate us, and in which we can all share historically, and that the other pre-empts us with as-yet-unrealised situations for which we may have little or no emotional experience or reserve on which to draw. That said, there had to be a way. So I left it on the backburner for a while until one evening I ended up in a discussion with poets about the different forms that poetic language could (or should) conform to. Although I consider myself to be a non-conformist, I am certainly of the opinion that all real Poetry should have scansion, preferably a rhyming scheme of sorts, and preferably not a really dogmatic and obvious one, and all else beside that is Prose in one form or another. It became clear to me during the debate that this linguistic Origami that the ‘poets