Just A Quickie with... Impresario Simon Thackray, who has just invited all the guests for The Shed's 13th birthday programme.

The Shed, the small North Yorkshire arts enterprise with the big ideas, will be on the air, in the village hall and up in arms about global warming this spring, when welcoming jazz musicians, throat singers, a poet, a comedian, an MP and an artist.

The season opens on BBC Radio 4. Explain, please, Simon.

"A special episode of With Great Pleasure was recorded live at The Shed for broadcast on Thursday at 11.30am. Shed stalwart Ian McMillan (pictured) has chosen his favourite poetry and prose to be read by poet Pete Morgan and actors Noreen Kershaw and Fine Time Fontayne.

"Ian is pictured in the brochure in his Shed-sponsored Pickering Under 13s football shirt and, with this year being our 13th birthday, I've just realised how appropriate that is."

There is plenty of jazz and blues on the Shed's menu at Hovingham Village Hall.

"We've lined up the Stan Tracey Quartet on February 24; Pinski Zoo on April 16; Billy Jenkins and the Blues Collective, April 30, and the Snake Davis Band, June 10.

"Stan Tracey's a legend; I met him at the Royal Arts party at the Royal Academy during the Queen's Golden Jubilee, and this will be his first time at the Shed. His Sage show in Gateshead has just been listed in the Guardian as one of the 101 things to do this year but we've got him first!

"Saxophonist Snake Davis will be bringing his A-team with him for our 13th Birthday Party. It'll be a standing gig, so it should be lively."

Comedy and poetry have their place this season, with both Stewart Lee and John Hegley making their Shed debuts, on March 5 and May 12 respectively. How did they come on board?

"The reason Stewart (one half of Lee & Herring and co-writer of Jerry Springer - The Opera) is coming is that I met him through Billy Jenkins. We were both guests on Billy's show on Resonance FM in London in 2002, and he sent me an e-mail a few months ago saying he was going out on tour and would like to perform at The Shed, so it's nice that it should happen that way. I wouldn't have gone out looking for stand-up comedy but it's come to us! John Hegley just said he wanted to come and play The Shed, and we're going to be the opening date of his new Uncut Confetti tour."

The Shed ventures into new territory with a free talk on climate change and global warming on March 11. Who will be taking part?

"Colin Challen and Max Eastley, and originally they were going to talk in my shed at home, but we think it may well attract more than the ten people who would fit in there, so we've moved it to Hovingham. Colin is MP for Morley and Rothwell and a Shed patron and last November he proposed the Domestic Tradable Quotas (Carbon Emissions) Bill in response to global warming.

Max is an artist working in kinetic sound, sculpture and music and he recently travelled to the Arctic with the Cape Farewell expedition. He'll talk about the expedition and the role of artists in the debate about climate change. There's real arts and politics crossover here and I think it's of interest to everyone."

No Shed season would be complete without the, frankly, obscure. Step forward Shaman Voices on May 8. Who are they?

"They unite three throat singing traditions: the ethereal beauty of Wimme's Finnish yoik, the gritty evocations of Okna Tsahan Zam's Mongolian Khoomei and the primeval sounds of Tanya Tagaq Gillis, from the remote Innuit town of Cambridge Bay in the Arctic. They've come to us through the Contemporary Music Network, and though I can't really describe the music, I'm sure it will go down well."

All The Shed's shows at Hovingham Village Hall start at 8pm. Box office: 01653 668494, Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 7pm.

Updated: 16:02 Thursday, January 20, 2005