I am so so sorry. I wish I had visited him again. He was a terrific man. A huge avuncular chap with a cheery outlook. He ran the fitters Arms folk club in Walsall for many years - booking all sorts of terrific acts over the years.

Afterwards if you were lucky you got invited back to his extraordinary house in Florence Street. The house was crammed with his interest in British Empire memorabilia. I remember his particular joy at one time in laying his hands on a vast amount of pith helmets. God only knows what he did with them. He could do songs Goodbye Dolly Grey, Soldiers of the Queen, The Road to Mandalay - with all the verses at the drop of a hat. But he was such a funny songwriter - songs about the small ads in the Sunday papers, filling his tax form in, a visit from te Royal family - all wonderful stuff!

In latter years he wrote loads of Sherlock Holmes stories and novels. Some of the rarer ones change hands for hundreds of pounds on Amazon and E-bay. Also he wrote some true crime books.

He had a fascination with crime and worked for years as a solicitors clerk for a Birmingham firm specialising in criminal cases. I believe he was in some way involved in representing the interests of the Birmingham 6.

He was a great singer and and writer of folksongs. He had lived in Australia for a while, and on the way home stopped by in America and went to meet Woody Guthrie, whom he idolised. he had a huge numbers of Woody's albums.

My condolences to all his close friends. He was a special guy.