INNFIELD

Following Part 1, which dealt largely with Cape Town and its environs, this episode deals with the fabulous concrete metropolis of Johannesburg, built on gold, that sprung up 138 years ago from the arid landscape 1,000 miles to the north. And we visit the dry, dusty hinterland of South Africa called the Karoo - the Place of No Water - that fills the centre of the country between the two cities.

On Monday, December 21, you'll be able to hear part 2 in our new series This is South Africa. In the last episode we looked briefly at Cape Town, which is where three boatloads of Dutch sailors arrived in 1652 to establish a victualling station for ships of the Dutch East India Company en route to India and the far east in the spice and silk trade. In this episode we visit Johannesburg, which 138 years ago didn't exist, until one day an itinerant prospector picked up a shiny pebble from the arid prairie and one of the world's top 50 and most vibrant cities was to emerge.

Here's a look at what the Innfield Podcast is all about. It runs for about a minute and a half - have a listen!

If you've ever considered going there, whether on the holiday of a lifetime or perhaps to settle (as many do), this episode gives you some useful and important background into the complex, welcoming and beautiful country that is South Africa.

Part 2 of the two-part Circus episode, which gives you an insight into life as the drummer in the band of a traditional travelling circus in rural South Africa in 1973.

It's not given to everyone to spend nine months as the drummer in a circus band.

That was how I spent the year of 1973, in the band of a travelling circus that travelled the length of South Africa from January to October of that year.

This is episode 1 of a two-part story that looks affectionately at circus life from the inside.

Join me, and release your inner gypsy.

For more than 30 years, Innfield had the privilege of presenting a daily three-hour music and talk show on national radio.

Since his schooldays, there had never been any doubt that this was what he wanted to do. He took the degree they wanted, and worked his way up from the bottom.

Radio - much more so than television, where Innfield has also worked as a producer - offers a very special level of contact with one's audience.

It was wonderful to be paid for doing something I enjoyed so much that I would probably have done it for nothing.

This episode looks at radio from the inside.

After a long and satisfying career as a daily anchor presenter on national network radio, I found time hanging heavily on my hands. So I thought I'd have a go at Internet radio. Couldn't hurt.

Well.

Just in case you've had a sudden rush of blood to the head and are thinking about doing the same thing, abandon the idea at once, or launch your station and then jump out of the window.

It's expensive, frustrating in the extreme and time-consuming. And the cost of music licensing, so that you aren't dragged off to the Bastille by the Copyright Police at 4am one cold winter morning, is shattering.

Getting people to listen is like pulling teeth without an injection. And every rank amateur in creation has also set up his or her stall on the web, and is competing for listeners.

This episode is a tongue-in-cheek guide for those of you who're still going to have a crack at it.

May it bring you joy.

In June 2015, Innfield and Mrs Innfield, who had been living peacefully in Cape Town, South Africa, found themselves needing at short notice to relocate to Germany.

Now the wheels of officialdom in South Africa grind exceedingly slowly, which didn't make this fraught exercise any easier.

However, somehow it got done, and we found ourselves (and our two cats, whose tickets cost considerably more than ours did) in The Glorious Fatherland.

Mrs Innfield is German, so she knew what to expect. Apart from a couple of flying visits there some years before, it was all new to me.

Join me on this particular voyage of discovery to a green and pleasant country where everything works, where the people are friendly, hospitable, barbarously efficient and rightly proud of their homeland - and where everybody speaks English of one kind or another.

Following on from the last episoide, London for Beginners, here's a bit more in response to those listeners who seemed to enjoy it last time round and who were kind enough to email in and say so.

I'm very sentimental about London. I was then, and I am now. As well as being a modern world capital, it's a place where history and tradition seeps from the cobblestones and pavements and buildings and gets into your bones.