MIKE HARDING is well known as a stand-up comedian, playwright, poet, broadcaster and documentary maker. He first came to Ireland as a teenager when he hitched around the country heading ultimately for County Galway and the Aran Islands. Instilled with a love of the country by his Irish-Catholic family in Manchester, his love of Ireland was further deepened by one of his teachers at St Bede’s College, Manchester – Father Augustus Reynolds. Under his guidance the poetry of Yeats and the plays and writings of J. M Synge took the young poet by the scruff of the neck and sent him reeling onto the Liverpool boat standing with a sunburned thumb at the side of the long road west. Over the following years he returned to Ireland many times, cycling and walking, playing his banjo in sessions and writing; one result of his wanderings was the acclaimed travel and walking book Footloose in the West of Ireland (Pub. Michael Joseph).