Manchester’s unofficial poet laureate, Tony Walsh, was due to be featured on BBC2 today at the beginning and end of the Great Manchester Run, Europe’s biggest 10-kilometre race, with 40,000 runners. Walsh is poet in residence for the run.

Walsh said: “It's always a great, very moving and colourful occasion - something I've tried to capture in my poems. There's also an exciting wheelchair race and the elite women's and men's races with the superhuman Haile Gebrselassie competing.

“The races are live on BBC2 between 11am and 1pm and my two commissioned poems will open and close the show. I'll be doing a live interview with triple-jump world record holder Jonathan Edwards just before my final poem is screened over a montage of the day's action. I'm really excited to share the final poem.”

The first poem, the stirring and inspiring ‘Do Something’, has been broadcast at Manchester’s football grounds, and has had thousands of hits on YouTube.