Canal laureate Jo Bell has made a TV appearance, popping up on a programme - about canals.  Jo made her appearance during the first episode of Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys, featuring Timothy West and Prunella Scales, boarding their boat during a trip along the Oxford canal. In the segment Jo reads her poem ‘Kingfisher’, and then Prunella reads another poem by Jo, ‘How to Live on a Narrowboat’: “Walk slowly, and quite often sideways …”   

You can find the segment at 36.38 on the video. Jo, whose new collection, Kith, will be published next month by Nine Arches Press, says of her role as canal laureate in the programme: “My mission is to explain a little bit about canals, and to bring people to the water who wouldn’t normally look at it too closely.” Before bidding them farewell, she energetically pulls a lift bridge open to allow the celebrity boating couple to pass by.