IAN McMillan uses words in the same way an artist may wield a brush or a sculptor a chisel.

Standing on stage silhouetted under a spotlight, he can hold an audience enthralled, fuelling the imaginations of young and old alike by taking them on a magical journey.

His only props, the rhymes and rhythms of his verse.

As one of the leading poets of his generation, Ian is a man on a mission -- and he's even prepared to cross the Pennines to carry out his work!

The Ian McMillan Family Show arrives at Burnley Mechanics on Thursday and a fun time is in store.

"I'm just arranging to bring a flip chart on stage for the finale," he says with an accent as thick as traditional Yorkshire pudding mixture.

"You see I liike to finish off the show by writing a poem involving the whole audience.

"I will start off with the first line and then open it up to everyone -- it's brilliant, we get these amazing epic poems.

"It's a bit like Woodstock with words. No-one has a clue how it will end up, particularly me."

As one of the leading poets of his generation, Ian has appeared regularly on radio and TV and is also a children's author.

"Kids are brilliant," he says. "They have such vivid imaginations.

"All you need to do is to give them the opportunity and they are away."

Ian regularly tours schools working with pupils.

His informal appraoch to language soon captivates young minds.

"schools are just fuill of delightful things which not everyone notices," he says.

"I recently went to a school and saw a sign saying PE trestles.

"From that we developed this wonderful fantasy about it being a plaque in memory of a previous head teacher called Mr Trestles.

"The kids just picked up on it straight away."

From his earliest days Ian has always been fascinated by language.

"At school I told the careers' teacher I was going to be a poet. He just looked at me and said 'nay lad tha's going into pit office'."

Growing up in Yorkshire, Ian's claim to fae is that he went to school with William Hague.

"He used to give us bottles of pop at break times," says Ian. "That was his dad's business."

As someone who claims to 'never had a proper job', Ian is forever touring and performinf.

He is also the official poet in residence at his beloved Barnsley FC and covered the magical season the club was in the Premier League.

"I was in the pub with some mates one nioght and one of them said why don't you ask them if you can be the official poet.

"The longer we stayed in the pub, the better the idea got. Fortunately the club agreed."

"One of the things I did was write a weekly poem for the programme. It had to be 16 lines long but sometimes I'd write one longer.

"Unfortunately the editor would just cut it after 16 lines so I'd get fans coming up to me saying 'I've read your poem but it didn't make any sense'."

Ian's next project will be to make a series of TV documentaries following the work of the police on Humberside -- in his own inimitable fashion.

However, it is language and fuelling youngsters' imaginations which is his main aim.

"It is addictive performing in public," he says. "It is just great to make people laugh."

The Ian McMillan Family Show is at Burnley Mechanics on Thursday. Details from the box office on 01282 664400.