The main legacy of skiffle is that some of us expect folkmusic to be accessible.

Donegan dipped into so many traditions - blues, Irish ballads, jazz, country music, music hall, r and b, rock, Denmark Street commerciality, songs from west end musicals.

He was the start. The first modern folksinger to realise that music in the age of the radio - let alone the i-pod, is global in nature. To construct a folkmusic that touches a modern audience - exposed to all this music - not just a few blokes round a haystack - you had to be eclectic.

I was privileged to see his last performance at Nottingham Royal Centre. He had been ill all day, but when he got in front of that audience, he could do no other than give of himself - such was the vitality inherent in his approach. There was no sense of mooching through old dead things and trying to sound half dead.

He was a truly great man.