Episode 7 The Arts Show

APPLAUSE

Hello, glad you could join us

for a very special Arts Show.

Tonight we are celebrating the art of performance.

We have got Patrick and Cara, sculptor and silversmith,

we also have the Wireless Mystery Theatre being dramatic, as they do.

Yes, that is Michael Longley, and that is Duke Special.

But first of all, I kind of like to think of them as

an Irish traditional music supergroup.

They are Ulaid.

APPLAUSE

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ulaid - Donal, Sean Og and John.

We'll have more from them later in the programme

with a very interesting collaboration.

And speaking of surprising partnerships, Cara Murphy,

what have you got to do with Number 10 Downing Street?

I have a piece that is a desk set in Downing Street,

that is part of the Silver Trust Collection.

There is no other work in the collection that is

from Northern Ireland, so when I was asked to do that,

I wanted it very much to represent Northern Ireland,

so it's got quite a lot of green enamel on it.

Who uses it, the PM?

-Yes. Whoever the current prime minister is.

-I wonder...

I wonder who's seen it. I mean, imagine who's been in that room.

-Yeah.

-OK, that's just me wandering!

Now, your work covers everything from teapots to cutlery.

That's quite functional, isn't it? Is that art?

Yeah, and I'm really interested in that idea that it IS functional,

but it IS sculptural, and it's looking at that idea of

challenging what is contemporary silverware?

I like the idea that the pieces are metaphorically growing

from the table, but it can also be used.

Well, this is the poshest-looking salt cellar and pepper thing

-that I've ever seen. Can I have a go of it?

-Yes.

-So I can pick this up...

-Yeah.

-How expensive is this? I don't even want to think.

And then you scoop it up and...

And then you can scatter it over your plate,

so I have lots of conversations with farmers about furrows and growing.

-Do you want them to be used?

-Yes.

Because, aesthetically, they are so beautiful.

This could be in an art gallery.

Yeah, and there are lots of pieces of mine - I'm very fortunate that

there are lots of pieces in different galleries and collections.

But it's really interesting when I'm making work for clients,

cos I look the idea that they use it, and they decide

how they're going to use it and they decide how things might sit.

So you could decide that these are all going to sit

to one direction, or you can have them facing different directions,

and I like that idea that when you own the piece,

you are then in control of the piece.

-Hours of endless fun at the dinner table...

-Yes.

..deciding which direction these fellas go in.

I still kind of get the feeling

there's a misconception between crafts and visual arts.

There's a certain snobbery.

No, I don't agree.

Oh, OK, fine, fine! LAUGHTER

We'll not... We'll take the fight outside.

Cara Murphy, it has been a pleasure. Aren't they absolutely beautiful?

Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

-Thank you so much. Now...

When is a spoon more than a spoon?

Well, that's the curious kind of question I think would appeal to

the Wireless Mystery Theatre, an audio theatre company who have

tackled everything from Sherlock to Ghostbusters.

For us tonight,

they have a Victorian tale which they swear is not made up.

-The year is 1851.

-The place is Smithfield Market, Belfast.

I am the judge who put him away.

I am the woman he cheated and killed.

And I am Dr Frew, apothecary, pseudo-physician,

healer of ailments, ills and what ails ye.

People call me a snake oil salesman.

I say what else will give your snake

the shiny, scaly skin that it deserves?

If you truly love your snake, then you'll rub him daily

with Dr Frew's Patented Smithfield Snake Oil.

Not tested on animals.

LAUGHTER

So come down to Smithfield Market and ask for the doctor whose

name is in...inverted commas.

MUSICIANS HARRUMPH

Order in the court!

Now, you were saying, Mrs Montgomery,

you rent the house to this gentleman and his wife.

-Yes.

-Where they practise medicine.

Oh, we never practise medicine in the house.

Then what were you doing on the evening in question?

We were PRACTISING medicine. Trying to get good at it.

They were drinking! Drunk in my good Christian home.

No, no, no, no, we were merry with intellectual curiosity.

-We had just discovered a potent new curative.

-A curative for what?

We don't know, which is why we were merry with curiosity.

LAUGHTER

I was only there for the rent, and all I said was,

"Doctor, I have come for what's owed me for the last time.

"I am sick and tired." And then he bottles me in the head!

With a bottle and everything.

I was offering her reprieve from her sickness and tiredness.

I was merely putting the bottle to her lips,

but my vision was a little impaired.

Then they roughhoused me and threw me down the stairs.

-They tried to ply you with drink.

-It was palliative.

As I said, we had discovered an unknown curative and were

very excited to see its effects.

Well, if it's such a miracle curative,

why is Mrs Montgomery's arm still broken?

Well, we'd drunk it all by then.

-LAUGHTER

-But look, my arms are fine.

Meanwhile, in 1857, another woman is about to fall foul of Dr Frew.

BELL TINKLES

-Doctor, Doctor?

-Yes?

-Are you Dr Frew?

-I am.

-Oh, thank goodness.

My name is Ellen Young,

an otherwise local, un-noteworthy woman.

Oh, I'm kept awake by horrible dreams.

Well, what you need is a good night's sleep once daily.

But you're in luck!

I've been working on a special draught for this very purpose.

One minute, please.

-Take this.

-Is it meant to spit like that?

Yes, yes, it's all perfectly natural.

-If you say so, Doctor.

-I do, I do.

I would stake my reputation on this bubbling, phlegmatic draught.

Did you administer this draft to Miss Ellen Young?

I didn't administer it to her, Your Honour. I sold it to her.

A draught which when she took she fell into a sleep

from which she never awoke.

Definitely the bit about falling asleep.

Now she cannot complain about that bit, satisfaction guaranteed.

It was a grave misjudgement on your part.

It was wanton medical malpractice.

Well, it can't be medical malpractice, Your Honour,

because I'm not a real doctor.

If you're not a real doctor, Dr Frew, then what are you?

Some sort of conjurer, a chiseler or a mystic woo-woo man?

I give the people what they want, a magical cure.

So you consider yourself some sort of mystical shaman, then, Mr Frew?

Nothing so great, Your Honour, nothing so great.

You can't spell "shaman" without simply "man."

Nor can you spell it without "sham."

Ooh.

I hoped to never again hear from Dr Frew, but I did,

in a folk song that ran throughout Belfast

all through the 19th century.

# Joe Muggins he stood by his old donkey cart... #

To cut the 42-verse ballad short,

Joe Muggins brings his donkey to market,

where he dreams of the herring

his young Sally Belle will cook for his tea.

When he comes home, he finds her drunk and belligerent.

# So he sent for two boxes of Dr Frew's pills... #

One box of which pills kills Sally Belle in her sleep

and then he takes the other to numb the pain.

# Sally was buried as we might do today

# Joe Muggins in less than a week

# And out of her bosom there grew a red carrot

# And out of Joe Muggins a leek, leek, leek

# And out of Joe Muggins a leek. #

All 100% natural ingredients.

And I never heard from Dr Frew again.

APPLAUSE

Wireless Mystery Theatre

and what they say is the true story of Dr Frew -

we believe them, don't we?

Now, for an exclusive for The Arts Show, our next guest

has been reading the poetry of Michael Longley since he was

at school, and he got thinking,

what would it be like if I put my music to his words?

He is Duke Special -

here he is reimagining Michael Longley's poem, Lena.

APPLAUSE

# The first person I did not want to die

# Was Lena Hardy, the country girl

# Who during the war took care of me

# She didn't die, she went away

# Lena

# I remember where I haven't been

# A townland that overlooks a lake

# We are strolling among the Wee Homes

# We are trying to find the Beggars' Bush

# Lena

# The first person I did not want to die

# Was Lena Hardy, the country girl

# Who during the war took care of me

# She didn't die

# She didn't die, she went away

# Lena

# Lena. #

APPLAUSE

Well, we did say it was pretty special.

Peter, come on and join us over here,

myself and the man himself, Michael Longley.

Michael, what did you make of that?

Did he do your words justice?

I thought it was beautiful. Really.

I think Duke Special is brilliant.

We met properly about a year ago

and it was amazing how many things we liked together.

Like what, Peter?

Chips.

Ivor Cutler, Leonard Cohen,

and it was...

a completely relaxed conversation we had about music.

I was very touched when he said he wanted to set some of my poems

to music. That's the first one, I think, isn't it?

Yeah.

And why did you choose that one?

-Um...

-Short.

Brevity always helps!

Yeah, I guess whenever... Like anybody that thinks about

creating something, you're not sure why it is

that you're drawn to something,

but it felt like an itch, is the only way I can describe it.

It's been brewing for this year now

and that's the only one I've set to music so far, actually.

And did you do it first and then tell Michael?

And then ask permission.

-OK, yes.

-Better to say sorry than to ask permission.

Duke sent me a CD and I was captivated

and I can't wait for other ones.

And has he been allowed to change... because this is the thing

about collaborations, because it's not song lyrics. It's poetry.

Even though Bob Dylan did win the Nobel Prize for literature,

they are lyrics, so there's a different meter, a different rhythm.

So what do you do? Were you able to change anything in Lena?

I think I just repeated a line, perhaps, but for me,

like a song lyric is poetry.

And for me it's about communicating something.

For me, I don't know where it's going to go in terms of what songs

will come out of it, and that frightens me

and also really excites me as to the unknown.

Well, we can't have Michael Longley here without reading

some of your poetry.

You've chosen one for us tonight.

This is Swans Mating, and why this particular one?

It goes back to when I was in my 30s.

It's a love poem from my youth,

and it's rather difficult to write love poems like this

when you're 77 and a half, but...

I think there's plenty of life still there

for a love poem or two, Michael.

I like this poem because it describes a happy moment

on the canal in Dublin when I was a student

and then it went into the back of my mind, and one day,

I was walking down the stairs in our house,

and the second stanza, it just came into my head complete.

I went to a typewriter nearby

and I thought it needs a first stanza and I rattled that out.

So if this is the best poem I've ever written,

it only took about five minutes.

Swans Mating.

Even now I wish that you had been there

Sitting beside me on the riverbank:

The cob and his pen sailing in rhythm

Until their small heads met and the final

Heraldic moment dissolved in ripples.

This was a marriage and a baptism,

A holding of breath, nearly a drowning,

Wings spread wide for balance where he trod,

Her feathers full of water and her neck

Under the water like a bar of light.

A round of applause, please.

APPLAUSE

Michael Longley reading Swans Mating, and you heard it here,

or maybe you didn't hear it, but he turned to Peter there and said,

"Do you want to set that one?"

So no pressure, fella!

You're so busy at the moment,

we're going to hear you at the end of the show with those Ulaid boys

from the opening,

so collaborations are very much in your life at the moment?

Yeah, I like feeling out of my depth.

LAUGHTER

-Put it that way.

-And YOU are never out of your depth.

And you've got a new collection - how fantastic is that to hear.

-A new collection coming out soon.

-In June.

-In June.

My 11th collection. And it's called Angel Hill.

Which is a Neolithic little hill above my daughter's cottage

in Lochalsh in the Western Highlands.

And...needless to say, it's my best book so far.

LAUGHTER

-Yeah.

-We will be the judge of it, I think. There are many, many fans of

yours here. Thank you both so much and don't feel out of your depth...

-I think...

-That's a good thing. I mean it as a good thing.

A lot of people will be rooting for you for this to work.

Please put your hands together for Duke Special

and Michael Longley.

Well, I've heard stories of how people become artists

but turning to ceramics after a rugby injury is a whole new one

for me. Patrick Colhoun, the muck of the ruck was replaced by...

-latex, pigskin, hosiery?

-It was, indeed, yes.

You're self-taught?

Pretty much, yep, started for me

at night school after I couldn't play rugby any more

and I was just looking for the next thing to do

and it turned out to be basic pottery.

-Really?

-Yep. So...

And had you any idea before that?

Cos you'd been working in construction, hadn't you,

-for 20 years?

-I'd... I had no real art background,

no art school, no... even art at school...

I made bits of wood and stuff with my father when he,

when he had a workshop...

But I picked up a prospectus and saw pottery

and was drawn to it and learnt to throw on a wheel and, er...

-sort of went from there.

-And talk to me about the materials

that you use for this, cos they're quite provocative,

-aren't they?

-Erm, it's basic clay, you know,

it started as quite abstract forms into the local craft scene.

When it came to developing it a wee bit, a couple of years later,

-I started introducing other materials.

-It's a bit

Fifty Shades Of Grey, isn't it?

HE LAUGHS

-With the old latex and the hosiery.

-It was primarily to, erm...

take it away from it being craft to more of a contemporary art

and I was aiming, at that stage, at maybe the London market

and had a few successes where I was selected for some

good shows over there, which built my confidence

and I just sort of went further and further.

And was there a bit of a snobbery about the fact that

you were self-taught and that you didn't go to art school?

-I didn't think about it too much...

-Right.

Because I was enjoying what I was doing, I was

getting, I suppose, the return from it. I was enjoying it so much.

And I think, you know, gaining these sort of tiny steps of...

little bits of success along the way just built confidence

and the more confidence I got,

the more I sort of, you know, changed things around

and...and took the next step.

Well, I'm sorry for the injury but we got a sculptor out of it.

-Patrick Colhoun, thank you so much, thank you.

-Thank you.

Patrick Colhoun, thank you. And thank you to all of

the performers and guests here this evening.

You can keep in touch with us online and on radio as well.

You can't get away from us, you know.

Now, we end with bold, collaborative spirit.

The idea of Duke Special and Ulaid teaming up together

was dreamt up over a pint in a local pub.

They've now produced a brand-new suite of music called

the Belfast Suite. Please put your hands together

for Ulaid and Duke Special. Goodnight!

# Int en bec

# Ro lec feit

# Do rinn guip

# Glanbuidi

# Fo-ceird faid

# Os Loch Laig

# Lon do chraib

# Charnbuidi

# The little bird

# That whistled shrill

# From the nib of its yellow bill

# A note let go

# O'er Belfast Lough

# A blackbird from

# A yellow whin

# The little bird

# That whistled shrill

# From the nib

# Of its yellow bill

# A note let go

# O'er Belfast Lough

# A blackbird from

# A yellow whin

# Int en bec

# Ro lec feit

# Do rinn guip

# Glanbuidi

# Fo-ceird faid

# Os Loch Laig

# Lon do chraib

# Charnbuidi. #

CHEERING