a very interesting artist!
first met him when i was about 17, living in Exmouth. Noel turned up at the local folk club. Mike "spoons" Sealey, a character on the Devon folk scene was giving him lodging.

He was , tall, beautiful and athletic. he could do all the great Irish chorus and drinking songs with enormous gusto. He knew a lot of MacColl stuff as well.....previously, i thought folk music was all about being pale and interesting like Bert Jansch and Marianne Faithful - but the memory of Noel giving his mighty all to about eight of us in the top room of the Pilot Inn in Exmouth still seems to me like one of the greatest folk gigs of all time.

the next week I saw Noel on telly south west singing Muirsheen Durkin and dancing barefoot (a donkey had bitten his foot so the foot wouldn't fit in his shoe).

Of course such vibrant talent couldn't be contained, and neither should it be, by gigs in tiny folk clubs. Noel became a national name. He was a great favourite of the great Manchester United team - Law, Best, that lot and did gigs on their tour bus. his proudest boast was that for ten years - he never had to ask for a gig.

by the time i was starting to get my shit together as a folksinger in my mid twenties - Noel was doing Cambridge, and the bigger folk clubs like the Boggery in Solihull. THough to me he never looked as comfortable. Noel was best with an audience that hung on his words - and generally at Cambridge the place was full of foreign students, and the Boggery had more than its share of pissed up Brummies.

It was this need for an attentive audience that Stopped Noel from making a fortune when there was an Irish theme pub on every street corner. it was sad. i'd like to see nice people get rich.

by this time Noel had retired to Cornwall. I wrote to him after I saw an article he'd written for the Irish POst, and he wrote me a couple of nice discursive letters. I bought an album he'd made with a group containing Irish/Brummie Aiden Foord (who wrote Dublin you're breaking my heart). i think i may have upser him when i said that everybody's version of tHe Lakes of Ponchatrain suffered in comparison to Christy Moore's.
i know he was going to be a writer, i know he kept in contact with Derek Brimstone.

Derek once told me that Noel used to play golf regularly with Eric Sykes, famous for gentle comedy, i.e totally unfunny. Anyway he'd never give Noel a walk on part on his tv show. what a mean git! still that's showbusiness!