It's a problem, isn't it, Fred, if you really get a passion for a particular style of music that's completely divorced from your own background? What do you do if you're a white builder from Clapham and you're madly in love with Cuban son or Chicago blues or Peruvian charango music? Do you say, "I really shouldn't play this stuff because I'm a white builder from Clapham". Of course you don't - you play the stuff because you don't give a toss what people might think about you, and because the music really moves you.

I think as long as you play your music without any false pretension, you're entitled to do what you like and sod the consequences. In a way, it's not dissimilar from any modern urban folk club performer singing the songs of rural labourers and fisherman.

I don't sing rural blues or rural folk songs, by the way, for the reason that they don't feel right for me - which probably justifies your comment! However much I love blues, I confine public my efforts mainly to commercial tomfoolery from the 20s and 30s...