I always thought of MacColl as a fascinating artist and charismatic thinker, as well as being a friendly decent guy.

To be honest one of the things I really loved about his work was his context in history. He was a kind of English bohemian intellectual that is no longer really feasible to modern minds,

Really he was the kind of intellectual/artist that Tony Hancock was so brilliant at satirising. That whole sort of ban the bomb/duffle coat 1950's chic.

I loved the independence of thought coupled with the sort of actor /manager swagger. In short he was terrific.

I could no more aspire to that kind of artistic endeavour than I could fly to the moon. I became a young man in the 1960's. So much had changed. we thought folk music was the future rather than part of a tradition. Its a subtle change. I suppose every generation hankers after modernity is what I'm saying. And the 1950's and 1960's saw a big difference in emphasis, even though we all had the interests of folk music at heart.