ON A wet grey day in Huddersfield, there’s nothing quite like a sunny blast of chatter from that South Yorkshire hot spot, Barnsley.

“It’s tropical here,” said the voice at the other end of the phone. “I’m sitting here in a jazzy shirt.”

Ian McMillan later admits he’s actually sitting in a rocking chair and not in a Hawaiian shirt, but he’s a man who likes colour in his life.

He also likes words and even before 10am, he’s revved up and ready to go. “I had to write a quick thing this morning and I had another to read and I’ve done that.

“I’m always good in a morning. Everything seems really clear. I’m a morning person. I get up at about 6am but by 8pm I’m finished. I’ve never seen the end of News At Ten.”

Which makes it difficult to see how he’ll stay awake through a live performance of his new show, Talking Myself Home, the Yorkshire poet, comedian and broadcaster’s life story in a book of poems.

Ian will be sharing this life in verse on stage at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield, a town he sings the praises of in only a slightly lower key than those of his beloved Barnsley.

At 52, isn’t even this veteran of our radio airwaves and TV screens a bit of a youngster to be penning his autobiography? Not a bit of it.

“I’m twice the age of David Beckham and he’s done two or three!” It turns out that his new book is all a jolly wheeze which came about when Ian visited his publisher in London.

“He had this fantastic 16th floor office with an amazing view over London. He sat there and said I think you should write your autobiography in verse.

“I went down in the lift laughing and they must all have thought I was drunk. They must be used to people either laughing or cursing on their way down in that lift.”

Ian had everything to celebrate. “The book is just a series of poems about my life starting in Darfield, near Barnsley, where my mam came from. My dad was a Scottish lad but mam was from Barnsley.

“They met as pen pals. My mam had a mate who had a penpal in the Navy and she said there’s another lonely sailor on board. You write to him.”

The two wrote to each other for two years before they met. “They started seeing each other occasionally and in about 1943, my dad said to my mam, I’ve got a 48 hour pass. Let’s get married.

“It’s so beautiful isn’t it?”

“Dad got the train from Plymouth to Peebles in Scotland where they were married. Mam was in the WAAF. They wouldn’t give her a pass so she went AWOL.

“They got married, had a couple of nights together and when mam went back she got arrested. She spent two weeks in the glasshouse. My brother told me that at her funeral. I didn’t know that bit.”

That funeral, 10 years ago, remains vivid in Ian’s memory too.

“It was a very windy day and there were these ancient pall-bearers, all with comb overs which were blowing all over in the wind.

“I was saying to myself, don’t drop her and they didn’t but the poem ended up with the coffin lid coming off and her flying over Barnsley and saying she wished she’d had her hair done!”

Surreal or what? But then Ian’s life, as well as his imagination, seems full of these incidents and characters to match.

After taking his degree in north Staffordshire, he worked on a building site and then in a tennis ball factory. His workmates on the building site nicknamed him Degree and set fire to his Guardian as he read it.

“One day I was walking down the site and this bloke Cyril was sinking into the mud up to his knees. I thought I’d put myself in a better light by helping him and shouted to the others to come and help. They all gathered round and Cyril stood up. He’d been kneeling down!

“He said ‘Just not so clever are tha Degree?”

Ian’s celebrity and in particular his TV appearances, similarly cut no ice in his home town of Barnsley.

“I can have been on Have I Got News For you and then go in a local shop and a chap will say to me, ‘I saw thee gabbing on telly again last night!’ ”

But gabbing is what he does and does well. And he admits that it’s the talking he likes best.

“A lot of poets are good writers but not great performers. I find the writing hard work but I love the performing whether it goes badly or well.”

And he quickly whips up another McMillan tale to illustrate the point.

“I’ve been doing this show with Tony Husband who does cartoons for the Times. It’s an improvised show and I like to welcome people as they come in. It’s a good way of having a look at the audience.

“I give people a free postcard as they come in and at this particular show, two women and two girls came in. I tried to give them a card and they didn’t want to take one.

“The two girls sat on the front row with the two women behind them. Their faces never moved. Then I saw one of the girls write a note and pass it to one of the women. I intercepted it and it read, ‘Not impressed, when do the acrobats come on.’

“I said ‘Are you really waiting for the acrobats. There aren’t any – just two fat blokes.”

You sense material for the future and a story that will glow and grow in the telling. Autobiography volume two in the making perhaps? “Perhaps when I’m 104!”

l Ian McMillan, Talking Myself Home is at the LBT on November 17 at 7.30pm. Box office is on 01484 430528. All profits from the show will be donated to Full Body And The Voice of which Ian is patron.