From Barnsley FC's poet-in-residence to five's new poet, Ian McMillan has made it his mission to bring verse to a wider public. And, he tells Nick Morison if it means he has to sit on a giant toilet in the middle of London, well so be it.

IAN McMillan is very much a morning person. Just as well, as when he arrives in the North-East on Thursday he'll be hotfoot from Cardiff, meaning he'll be catching the 6.29am train. The only problem is he's not due on stage until 7.30pm.

"If I could do all my work between 6am and 10am I'd be very happy," he says. "For me, a late night cabaret is at lunchtime, but all the gigs are in the evening. I really should do all my gigs at 9.30."

Ian is a modern day troubadour, the natural successor to the bards who recorded in verse everything from a day's hunting to a battle for any self-respecting king and baron. Those were the days when a poem was an event, a performance, and it is that spirit he wants to recreate.

"Poetry started off as a spoken form, they were performing, singing and chanting it, and it then got to be a form that people wrote down, and that excluded a lot of people who couldn't read and write," he says.

"There's this idea that poetry is remote and I'm trying to get away from that. I have always wanted to widen out the franchise for poetry."

And he's certainly put his rhymes where his mouth is. He's been poet-in-residence at Barnsley FC and Northern Spirit trains, and beat poet for Humberside Police, as well as investigative poet for Yorkshire TV. He appeared on Radio Four's Today programme during this year's general election, is a regular on Mark Radcliffe's Radio Two show, partnered Paul Merton on Have I Got News For You? and hosts weekly show, The Verb, on Radio Three.

"What I'm trying to do is make the idea of poetry seem very accessible," he says. "On the Today programme, it is saying poetry can be part of the news, and I work for five occasionally as their news poet. I like the idea of having a poet to present things in a different way."

His mission to bring poetry closer to the people is reflected in his stage show, which he brings to the North-East on Thursday as part of Durham Literature Festival. Along with musician Luke "Carver" Goss - "he calls himself that to distinguish himself from the other one" - he'll be reading poems and telling stories, ending by involving the audience in making up a poem, with the aid of a flip chart.

"That is always my favourite part of the show because I never know what is going to happen, and it makes it exciting for the audience, although there is usually a moment where there is complete silence," he says.

"I always try and make the audience feel part of the show and I never look at it as the performer being removed from the audience. I give them the first line, you ask for ideas and usually somebody says something and it builds from there. It's usually funny. Well, it makes me laugh."

But while there are usually a few moments of seat-shuffling awkwardness, he says the eventual response shows the level of interest in poetry, which he reckons is now at something of a high point. His appearances on the Mark Radcliffe show appear to back this up: when listeners are asked to contribute by e-mail, the producers are deluged.

"People do like writing poems, but they feel that somehow theirs aren't as good as anybody else's, or there's this poetry establishment that doesn't include them," he says.

"I try and emphasise to people that they're just part of a great continuum, the poems they're writing are the same as anybody else's. I want people to come out of my shows thinking, 'Is that all it is? I can do that,'.

"Poetry is on the up and up. I've just been judging a national performance poetry award and I'm really excited about all the new poets that are about. It is to do with the performing scene and hip hop, and a young lad who can rhyme isn't seen as a sissy any more."

His own career began as a drummer in the folk rock band Oscar the Frog, before moving on to performance poetry. After spells working on a building site and in a tennis ball factory, he worked with the Circus of Poets performance group and then Versewagon, before partnering Martyn Wiley in Yakety Yak. His published collections include Perfect Catch, I Found This Shirt, Dad, the Donkey's On Fire and Just Like Watching Brazil.

He's speaking from the National Space Centre in Leicester, where he donned a space helmet and jumped up and down for a publicity stunt. "Stunts is mainly what I do," he says. "I do a lot of stunts."

Previous stunts include dressing up as a cowboy to promote pony trekking for Barnsley Council, although probably his most bizarre promotion was sitting on a giant toilet in central London for a well-known killer of household germs.

"Domestos rang up and wanted me to write a poem about Domestos. The idea was I would sit on this giant toilet in the middle of Leicester Square reciting this poem, but because it got so busy we could only do it at half past six in the morning.

"Being a Barnsley boy I have no dignity at all, and anyway Domestos is a nice thing. I wouldn't do a stunt for arms manufacturing, I would draw the line somewhere.

"You get asked to do some daft things, but I don't mind doing them. I have always enjoyed standing up and performing, and I have always wanted to widen out the franchise for poetry and if I can do that by sitting on a giant toilet, I will," he says.

His approach hasn't always gone down well with the poetry establishment. "I do get people taking me aside, saying can I write more serious poems. They see me as some kind of pirate with poems," he says. "A lot of people would like me to write serious stuff, but I have always been an entertainer."

Earlier this year he was named the 22nd most powerful person in radio in the Radio Times, an occasion for much rejoicing. His son rang with the news while Ian was on the train to London, so as soon as he reached Kings Cross he went out and bought the magazine. "I was so excited, I was really absolutely flabbergasted," he says.

"What I liked was the specificness of it. I was number 22, not number one, not number 30, but number 22. It's like being third from bottom of the Scottish Second Division. It's like being Stenhousemuir, it's just very specific.

"I have often wondered what it would be like to be really famous. I imagine it would be awful, but the thing about being famous on the radio is that nobody knows your face. I'd like a taste of fame, though, just to see what it would be like."

* Ian McMillan is appearing with Luke Goss at St Nicholas Church, Market Place, Durham on Thursday, 7.30pm. Tickets £8 (£4 concessions). Full details of the Durham Literature Festival, which ends next Monday, are available on www.literaturefestival.co.uk or from Durham City Arts on 0191-301 8245.