Roots - hah - don't talk to me about roots!

Born in Lancashire, raised in Glasgow, back to Lancashire, college in Leeds (passport job, that last one), 9 years in London, 40+ years in Sussex.

Roots? Mmm... Most of my father's ancestors were Lancashire miners or weavers. Most of my mother's were East Anglian backsmiths or tailors. But I've never been down a mine or struck an anvil in my life - though I did make a few shirts in my younger days. So the idea of me singing songs about mining or smithing - or making shirts - has always struck me as a ludicrous one.

My childhood musical "roots" were of the family sat round my grandparents' piano, belting out songs from the 1920s and 1930s - their era - with the occasional great-aunt turning up with a banjo and giving us music hall stuff, comic songs and popular stuff from George Formby and Gracie Fields. Then the radio gave me big bands, Django Reinhardt, Bill Haley, Lonnie Donegan, Les Compagnons de la Chanson and a thousand others.

The idea of exploring music from everywhere, in all styles and of all periods, is one that has been embedded in my consciousness from those early days and is there still. I just can't resist a good tune.