Whenever there was a rainy day when I was at Infant School we would sit crossed legged on the floor in the school hall and sing songs from the News Chronicle Song Book - Men of Harlech, The Lincolnshire Poacher, Hearts of Oak, The Hermit, and something about a cook with one eye on the pot and the other up the chimney.

At church socials we sang "choruses" at the scouts we sang other songs I later found out were "folk".

Then in 1967, I was working on an International Work Camp in Birmingham, and one of the chaps there said "I usually go down to a folk club on a Thursday night", and we got on a bus and went down to Digbeth Civic Hall.

The rest, as they say, is history,

John