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Driving Bill Drummond

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13/08/2017

BBC Radio 4 - Driving Bill Drummond

Bill Drummond is driving to every county in Ireland in five days. But what's driving Bill?

Poetry programme. Bill Drummond is driving through all of Ireland's 32 counties in 5 days with a poet in a white Ford Transit van. But what exactly is driving Bill?

Bill Drummond is many things. As well as an artist, a writer and former pop-star - he's the owner of an old curfew tower in Northern Ireland which he runs as an artists' residency. Last year some poets from Belfast's Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry stayed there and Bill published their collected work in a little black book called The Curfew Tower is Many Things. 

Except for a poem the award-winning Belfast poet Stephen Sexton wrote. Apparently that one went missing. So Bill has left two pages blank in the book for Stephen to fill in with poetry as they drive through all of Ireland's 32 counties in 5 days in a white Ford Transit hire-van, giving out copies as they go. 

But what exactly is driving Bill Drummond? 

Producer Conor Garrett is there to find out. As they cross the Irish border and over each county boundary, Conor is becoming increasingly concerned he may not have a good enough story for his radio programme. It's a problem further complicated by the fact Bill won't talk about his chart-topping '90s pop band who once famously set fire to a very large pile of their own cash. Then, when a narrative arc does eventually develop, Conor can't be sure how authentic it is. And what's all this stuff about eels?

Producer: Conor Garrett.

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