We are used to hearing Melvyn, Lord Bragg, interviewing others. Over the 50 years or more of his presence on our screens and airwaves he has informed, educated, entertained and at times enthralled us by sharing the results of his own passionate curiosity and down-to-earth, no-nonsense love of the Arts in all their forms.

For once a series of excellent questions from the audience freed him to expand on deep felt insights, affectionately telling and funny anecdotes from a lifetime of meeting and sharing ideas with an extraordinary range of supremely talented people: from Dolly Parton to Francis Bacon; Barushnikov to McCartney. His indomitable enthusiasm and searching curiosity renders even the esoteric and perplexing accessible to anyone with a willingly open mind and a desire to understand.

To use a much overused and often undeserved term: the Right Honourable The Lord Melvyn Bragg is a genuine National Treasure who carries his distinction lightly with a sublimely English self-deprecation which marks a genuine humility without a hint of what the Welsh call 'side'.

Melvyn rocks! 

The new series of South Bank Original on Sky Arts, although using 1000s of hours of peviously aired interviews etc is a completely new, re-examination of a particular subject or artist over many years. The two shown here on Dolly Parton and Mikhail  Baryshnikov were insightful, poignant and beautifully observed.