Come to Hay-on-Wye this weekend for books, beer and bibulous banter (phew)

Tim Hampson and I are doing a collaborative beer tasting at the Hay Ale & Literature Festival this Friday at Kilvert’s, Hay-on-Wye (see here for more insider stuff). We’re on at 8pm, trying to keep people from vanishing after they’ve been rocked by Pete Brown at 7pm, while next day Pete, Zak Avery and Melissa Cole will be strutting their stuff. Tim and I will be doing a kind of ‘He said North Wales, He said South Wales’ gig. I will be doing the northern angle and Tim the southern region (will he include Stella?…). Both of us will feature three beers each and we’ll just riff on the subject, taste the beers, maybe read some literature (my plans for reading some Welsh have been scuppered by my mother’s low estimation of my pronounciation so George Borrow has preambled to the rescue) and just have a good time. The whole festival looks like a thrilling event with over 50 Welsh beers (that would have been a job 20 years ago), a lot going on and of course the lovely place of Hay as a backdrop. If you’re in the area why not drop in, we don’t frighten easily. And if you want to get a glimpse of what you might be in for here’s some footage of myself doing Otley’s O-Garden at the Rake for the drinks website Drinkprice.