This week, we introduce you to some of the interesting people we’ve been staying with on our travels, including a radical vicar, a lady who keeps roadkill in a deep-chest freezer, a sculptor and a palm reader. And it is thanks to the palm reader that you can now discover the true identity of David Eagle, Michael Hughes and Sean Cooney. What dark secrets are housed in our palms? and what does our future hold? At our recent gig in North Boarhunt, the audience seemed rather keen for Michael to undress. Will he give in to public pressure? Find out why David has a bone to pick with Eliza Carthy. It’s the return of Folk in Focus, the folk news programme that brings you the stories that other folk programmes and publications just don’t have the balls or the journalistic nous to tackle; this week James Fagan is under the spotlight. And it’s also the return of the Folked-Up Folk Song; can you identify the folk song from the food-based lyrical clues? Music comes from our Polish friends Brasy, taken from their recent concert at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

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Our final Hartlepool Headland Folk Festival podcast features music and conversation with the world folk duo the Hut People, and Mic and Susie Darling who write and sing songs about their lives as traveling people. Step this way for budgie and biscuit based banter, exotic percussion instruments, outstanding accordion playing, harrowing and heartwarming songs and stories.

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This week we bring you music and conversation with 2014 BBC Folk Award winners Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar, recorded as part of the Young’uns’ Hartlepool Headland Festival. We chat about how they met, their repertoire, songwriting, weird gigs, philosophers and biscuits.

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The Young’uns return from ten days away from home, hosting their Hartlepool Headland Festival and then touring England with Polish vocal harmony quintet Brasy. In this podcast we bring you highlights from the last en days, with music and conversation from Brasy and the Wilsons. We teach Brasy Geordie in preparation for their gig in Newcastle, while Brasy attempt to teach us a very fast and wordy Polish song; plus it’s the Young’uns vs Brasy in the Birthday Game; the Wilsons share anecdotes from their time working with Sting and Jimmy Nail and hanging out with the likes of Paul Simon and Steven Spielberg; and there’s another chance to play at identifying the folk song in our game, the Folked-Up Folk Song.

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This week we introduce you to potentially the world’s worst weather forecaster; a trout becomes the star of a recent Young’uns show; we revisit another disastrous Young’uns gig; the rigours of touring starts to take its tole, and after weeks of bed sharing and living in each other’s pockets tensions start to manifest themselves onstage; David Eagle is getting loose at the Young’uns album launch; we annoy some geriatric conservatives; play along with Michael and David as they vie for supremacy in our new game, The Birthday Game, plus our new quiz returns for a second week, the Folked-up Folk Song; there’s an appearance from Brian Blessed; musically, there’s a collaboration between the Young’uns and Greg Russell, and a drunken version of Oasis’ Wonderwall from a pub in Scotland played on a horrendously out-of-tune piano and accompanied by children playing woodblocks and maracas. All that and more can be yours when you download this week’s Young’uns Podcast.

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To download previous podcast episodes or to subscribe for free to receive podcasts automatically visit the Young’uns Podcast page here.

P.S. Our festival is taking place this weekend on the Headland Hartlepool. Full weekend tickets are just £30. Go here for more information and to buy tickets.

Maybe see you there. And we’ll be back in just over a week with highlights from the festival.

The Young’uns podcast is back, with a new quiz – Folked-Up Folk Song – some gargling, “highlights” from the worst gig the Young’uns have ever had the misfortune of doing. There’s a collaboration between the Young’uns and the Wilsons and a tribute to Pete Seeger. Plus we discover what’s lurking in a toilet in Stonehaven, and we receive a very unusual request.

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On March 13 I presented a lecture at Hartlepool’s English Martyrs and Sixth Form College entitled The Eagle Is Candid,. I wasn’t intending on making this available online because I wanted to develop some of these ideas further for standup, but I’ve received quite a few comments from people asking me to put it up. So I’ve given into public pressure. But you have to promise me that you won’t hold it against me if you hear me doing the same material elsewhere, and make sure that you still laugh regardless.

u can download the audio from the night here.

I give a little introduction in the MP3 and so I don’t think there’s any need to write anything else.

Enjoy.

Incidentally, you can subscribe to the podcast that features this audio along with audio versions of my blog posts read by me. Subscribe in iTunes or View the RSS feed to see past episodes and subscribe with something other than iTunes.

Thanks. I’ll be back soon.

The pop group Take That and fascism are two of the subjects covered in an interview I did recently for the folk website Folk Witness, which discusses the Young’uns’ new album which came out last week. You can read the interview here.

I’ve decided, due to popular demand, to post a sample from my Eagle is Candid night online this week. It’ll show up on the audio podcast version of my blog tomorrow. I will of course link to it on here too.

Incidentally, if you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the podcast with ITunes here,
or View the RSS feed here.

Until tomorrow …

Firstly, thank you to everyone who came to my Eagle Is Candid night at English Martyrs School in Hartlepool. I was quite taken aback by how many students were in attendance, which I hadn’t really expected. I was slightly concerned that some of the subject matter might be a little risqué for such an audience, but there was no time to sensor what I’d planned and so references to lesbian sex and bare breasts remained.

I’ve had a few people ask me if I’ll be putting the recording online. My intention is to develop some of the ideas from the night into a fully formed standup set, and so I don’t intend to put this fledging incarnation online. I put a lot of the comedy bits from gigs on Young’uns podcasts, and often this means that an idea only gets tried out once before I bung it straight online, meaning that it doesn’t get a chance to develop into something better and more elaborate. Although this does have its advantages; it means I have the challenge of generating enough new material at gigs to fill a podcast, which is exciting.

Talking of the Young’uns podcast, we should have a new podcast uploaded this month. I’ve been touring for the last fortnight and so we’ve got loads of clips.

Anyway, the primary purpose of this blog is to alert you to some articles that we’ve written for the folk website Spiral Earth. The final two articles were written by me and chronicle ten years of the Young’uns, with some insights and anecdotes that you’ll hopefully find amusing. The articles can be read here.

Enjoy. Back soon.

English Martyrs Catholic School and Sixth Form College in Hartlepool hosts an annual lecture which is now in it’s twenty-fourth year. Previous speakers include politicians Peter Mandelson and ann Widdecombe. Presumably the economic climate has caught up with the school, because this year they’ve asked me.

It’s quite interesting that the invitation came just a few days after my blog about the catholic church. Perhaps if they had read that particular blog then things might have been different. Fortunately for them, I do not intend to use my lecture to rant about the catholic church, as I have decided instead to talk about a much more interesting and important subject: myself.

My title for my lecture is The Eagle Is Candid! Here is the publicity blurb:

David Eagle is a 28-year-old blind man. This lecture is dedicated to all those people who have stopped David in the street, to all the shopkeepers and checkout workers who have happily held up queues, to all the taxi drivers who have taken the slowest and most circuitous route possible in order to ask him a litany of questions about what it’s like being blind, or simply to tell him how brave he is.

David has been late for countless business appointments, dates, and meetings with friends as a result of people holding him up with questions about his blindness, or just to talk endlessly about how brave they think he is for managing to survive without sight.

Therefore, he has decided to dedicate this lecture to answering some of the most common questions asked to him by the general public, in the hope that it might help facilitate him to actually get to where he is planning to go without being stopped by complete strangers intent on talking about blindness. Join David as he dispels myths, untangles untruths and picks apart: common conceptions and assumptions about blindness and disability, delivered in a humorous and light-hearted style. In addition, he will tell stories from his life, including how he has had to fight prejudices, stereotypes and barriers to realise his ambitions and dreams. He’ll also tell about how he has recently been talents spotted at the BBC by a top TV, radio and stand up comedy agent, and explain how he has ended up working as a professional musician in a folk group who have featured in an Aadman animations film starring Miranda Hart, Catherine Tate, Vick Reeves and David Walliams.

After the talk there will be a chance to ask any questions you might have, such as: “how do you eat. I mean … how do you know where your mouth is? I mean… You’re blind?!” Or to simply tell him how brave you think he is.

The lecture is due to start at 7pm Although it may start a little late if David is stopped in the street or is taken on an extended route by an overly inquisitive taxi driver.

The lecture is on Thursday 13th March. The lecture starts at 7pm, but you are advised to get there a little earlier. After all, you don’t want to miss my opening gag about the two nuns in the bath. No, don’t worry, if there’s anyone official from the school reading this, that was a joke.

Tickets are completely free. If you fancy it, email admin.ems.hartlepool.sch.uk or call 01429273790.

Hope to see you there.