FEW people have combined the roles of poet, playwright, actor, director, broadcaster, novelist and music manager. Mark Bowen talks to Ludlow's Gareth Owen about his career presenting a national radio series, writing and starring in his own productions and managing a major musical talent.

FOR a talent who has produced nine works of fiction, five poetry books and numerous plays it is surprising that the young Gareth Owen didn't at first consider becoming a writer.

As a lad in Ainsdale, Lancashire, it never occurred to him to pick up a pen, even though he possessed a love of words.

"I knew what writers were. I'd seen them at the Plaza cinema and they were posh and brave in the war," Gareth said. "At school I was fairly hopeless. I once got 6% for algebra but I was good at English and I loved using the big words I'd read in the dictionary."

Gareth, who has lived in Ludlow for 11 years, left school at 16, going into the Navy. Eventually he became a teacher.

"At my first school I couldn't find any published poems that were about the ordinary life I'd led. So I started writing my own."

Gareth then heard the "voice" of a Lancashire schoolboy speaking to him. It inspired his earliest poems.

"He was me and somehow not me," Gareth said. "He was telling me about what life was like in the ordinary, rough-and-ready school he went to. Before it went away I wrote it down and called it Our School."

Gareth's first book, Salford Road, was published 17 years later and started his career of writing poems, plays, and novels. He also began acting and directing productions, and even penned the musical Old Country - despite being unable to play an instrument.

"I call myself a journeyman. I started acting at the Crescent Theatre in Birmingham and just happened to do lots of different things.

"Many things are down to chance - like living in Ludlow. I stopped off here on the way to Wales and thought it would be a good place to live and so it proved to be."

One of these "things" was discovering and managing Ruby Turner, one of the UK's finest soul singers. At the age of 16 Gareth saw her perform in the rock opera A Streetcar Named Desire at the Edinburgh Fringe. He cast her in his next production and was so impressed he took charge of her career.

"When I first saw Ruby I thought she was brilliant. I asked if she wanted to be in one of my shows and I gave a lot of the songs to her. The show was a huge success which astonished me," Gareth said. "After this I managed her and we released her work on my record company Sunflower Records."

Gareth also presented Poetry Please! on Radio 4, introducing poems selected by listeners to a national audience .

"I always enjoyed reading other people's poems and won a national competition called Speak a Poem in the early 1990s," Gareth said. "One of the prizes was that you got to read a poem on Poetry Please! I started to read regularly and eventually ended up presenting it."

Gareth's most recent book called Can We Have Our Ball Back Please? celebrates the joys of football through the lives of ingenious characters.

"There are poems about all aspects of the game. The triumphs, the heartbreaks, supporters, mascots and posturing referees," Gareth said

"There are also serious pieces, including one about my dad, who used to take me to Everton when I was a lad."

Gareth is currently re-editing the film version of his musical Old Country and continues reading his poetry to audiences around the country.