It started for me with my sister's copy of Basket of light - still a wonderful album, incidentally. Then there was Steeleye Span, of whom I was a big fan up until they hooked up with Mike Batt (ugh). But then there was punk, and I didn't really listen to any of this stuff again until after I'd started performing, which was about 25 years later.

As an unaccompanied singer I came to loathe folk-rock, mainly because those arrangements are so hard to adapt ("One morning in the month of May, 2, 3,/When all the birds were a-singing, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, and/") I was stunned by my first, belated encounter with Anne Briggs ("so that's how you do it!"), and more recently stunned all over again by John Kelly ("so that's how you do it!"). I'm on a 4:4 kick at the moment, although it's not the folk-rock kind of 4:4.

Among contemporary artists, I very much liked Espers' first album (not the second); James Yorkston does some nice material, although his interpretation's not very exciting. If we're talking singer-songwriters, Peter Blegvad's probably my favourite (assuming we get Dylan thrown in, like the Bible and Shakespeare).

So ultimately I'm with Mr Happy: yes, rather a lot over the years, and in more specific ways since I've been performing. And no, given that I was listening to Peter Blegvad (and Dylan, and Pentangle) 30 years ago.