About Me...

BIOGRAPHY Born in the Year of the Tiger, I guess it was inevitable that I’d form an attachment to all things feline, and have the same urge to roam. After completing a teacher training course, it wasn’t the Leaving of Liverpool that grieved me ....... and a few years down the line, my wanderlust took me further still to Denmark I can’t remember a time when I didn’t write – my father claims to possess a story I wrote when I was six which filled 4 standard school exercise books! What I do remember from that time was being told off for doing the Liverpool Echo crossword before he got home from work! Perhaps it was the catalyst of breathing the same air as Hans Christian Andersen! While I was living in Denmark I allowed myself to be persuaded to write ‘for a purpose’ instead of purely for my own amusement. Now, twenty years later, the story I started at that time has been rewritten and revised a hundred times and I’m still not satisfied with it! Fortunately, I’ve had several other irons in the fire over the years. Recently I had my first taste of success with a short play being selected for performance at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As I write I am hoping to persuade some Moneybags or other to back one or more of several dramatic pieces I’ve penned with Liverpool’s status of Capital of Culture 2008 in mind...... Ambitions? Like the ‘One Hit Wonder’ Thunderclap Newman, to earn enough to retire from the rat race, buy a plot of land (Castle Island on Lough Key, County Roscommon) and rebuild the castle on said island which used to belong to my ancestors…… Yes, the location of “The Chapel of Her Dreams” is a real place .......!!

Music Tastes...

Prefer acoustic to electric, music with "proper melodies", not screaming, shouting and swearing. Maybe that's why I like my own stuff more than current chart trash ...........?? Love listening to harmony work, including classical choirs - Welsh Male Voice choirs, for example, and 'classic' musicals such as "Cats"

First ever record/cd you remember listening to...

I remember buying an LP with the one-word title "Cliff" (well, I was about 6 at the time!) I also remember being blown away by the instrumental "JET BLACK " Hank and "Da Boyz" still called themselves THE DRIFTERS at the time, this predated the courrt case and their decision to become "The Shadows.Before my seventh birthday I had taught myself to play the tune (badly, but it was recognisable!). My second guitar was one I built myself by the time I was 10 ...... since that time I must have had a dozen or so, but curiously never more than ONE AT A TIME ............

First ever record/cd you remember buying...

I was solidly into trad folk before I even left primary school. This was at a time when you could 'do the rounds' of folk clubs in Liverpool, a different venue each night, and it would take well over a month to complete the circuit - especially for a fresh faced "No way are you eighteen, Sonny Boy -sling yer 'ook!" folk junkie who just wanted to PLAY ......... Claancy Bros., Spinners, Dubliners sat alongside US imports such as Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Simon & Garf on my shelves.......

Best live performance you’ve seen...

I'm going to cheat, because I can't decide ............ Simon & Garfunkel live in Central Park (ticket bought as a birthday present when I spent a summer wotking aS sTAFF at a US Boy Scout Summer Camp) Bob Dylan, KB Hall, Copenhagen DK in 1981??1982??

Favourite radio stations...

Local patriot!!! Radio Merseyside ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Favourite music magazines and papers...

nONE OF 'EM IMPRESS ME

Worst song ever...

ANYTHING EMANATING FROM THE TRASHY GOB OF AMY WHINE-HOUSE ............ or Robbie Williams, whose singing is ALMOST as bad as his acting. I have been known to wake up coverfed in a cold sweat, having had nightmares about some berk persuading the pair of them to record a DUET .......... AAAARGGGGHHHH!! EXIT, STAGE LEFT ......