He blames the thunder, lightning and torrential rain, plus his loss of a contact lens earlier in the day, for the disjointed and confused delivery.

But this wasn't the Bragg we knew from the TV and radio broadcasts, the assured, smooth speaker.

His brief was to talk about the third part of his semi-autobiographical series of novels, Crossing The Lines. But he hardly touched the subject and his publishers would have been furious, he admitted.

We did, however, get insights into his motivation for writing fiction.

Bragg believes fiction is the way we discover what we are as human beings, a way of tapping into the conscious and subconscious and exploring what we were, are and what we can be.

So, he had some important things to say. It's a pity the delivery wasn't as good as we had hoped.