What changed it for me was a Don Williams song. You're My Best Friend. I figured - this song is structurally just the same as The Banks of the Ohio, The Cornish Nightingale - songs I was singing for nothing in folk clubs. I entered a country and western competition. Won it. An agent approached me.

It was a steep learning curve. However unlike Blandriver - did get an urge to write to you - because we seem to have had similar sorts of gig experience - i saw a lot of positive virtues in the songs that put food on the table every week.

The virtues were that they were closer to the musical soul of the people of England than the 'arty' presentation of Carthy and Jones and people who at that time were king of the folk clubs.

I also found that Irish people were in a lot of the country clubs and country musicians were often Irish. they had a load of narrative and rebel songs, in the country idiom, which had a special significance for them.

Anyway that was part of my story. I sidestepped the buggers. Got my hit record in germany. Got my guitar technique wherever i can. I don't apologize for what i did with English folk music and what i made out of it. I'm sorry if it doesn't conform to some blueprint, that the folk music fraternity has in their minds. But to be honest I think if most of them met the originators of the Black Velvet band and the Wild Rover - most of them would faint with the vapours.