The Shed

It’s another Shed away-day, with Simon making a flying visit to Wing in Rutland, where, in a studio burrowed into the bottom of her garden, Angela Harding is inspired to create some of the most beaiutiful and recognisable illustrations of recent times. Her images of animals, birds and both coastal and rural landscapes have graced the pages of some of our best known and most beloved writers, from M...

On a stormy late-summer afternoon, a legendary singer-songwriter makes the seismic journey from South Yorkshire to West Yorkshire to drop in on Simon and make sure he's properly kitted out for the wild winds and lashing rain. Richard Hawley is perhaps our greatest living balladeer. As well as having played alongside some of the biggest names in music,  he's also made a major name for himself with...

Simon welcomes journalist, newsreader and now novelist Reeta Chakrabarti to the shed for a conversation that arcs from her childhood in Birmingham to reporting from conflict zones around the world. Reeta discusses her debut novel, Finding Belle, a moving coming-of-age tale of family, identity, mental illness and cross-cultural roots that moves from the beaches of Mombasa to England in the 1970s -...

Being the gormful chap he is, Simon is deeply happified to welcome Britain's best-known and best loved lexicographer and etymologist Susie Dent to the shed. Susie has not only served in Countdown's Dictionary Corner for more than three decades (and graced the slightly less seemly environs of '8 Out of Ten Cats' in the process), she has also written the novel 'Guilty by Definition' and numerous non...

It's not just anyone who could lure Simon away from his Yorkshire fox-hole for a shed away-day - but the chance to meet the magnificently multi-talented musician, actress and erstwhile fast-bowler Self Esteem is more than enough incentive to get him on the train. She tells him all about the thrills and frustrations of a career in music, her hopes of branching out into more experimental work, the p...

It almost goes without saying that Frank Skinner is one of the most successful comedians and broadcasters of the past thirty years. More recently he has also proved himself to be an extremely astute and generous reader of poetry through the brilliant 'Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast' which sees him navigate the work of a wide range of poets with all the engagement, skill and apparent effortlessness...