I was born, to my abiding shame, in Surrey. My parents, both Brummies (born within the smell of Gas Street Basin) were living in Haslemere at the time. But we did walk back into the light, moving home to God's Own Acre when I was four.

But there it is, honestly, it's almost as though they did the Haslemere thing out of spite. My birthday makes me, according to one astronomical system, a Draco. The distinctive character trait of the Draco is that, asked his sign, he dodges the question and later surreptitiously dribbles down the back of the enquirer's blouse.

I'm 53 and, like everybody, counting.  Schools: yes. Formative years in Smethwick, Sutton Coldfield and Stourbridge.  At age ten, I had a few fruitless piano lessons with the saintly Mr. Wilson. But for Christmas 1968, when I was 14, Santa brought me a guitar, £4 6s 8d-worth of heaven. I loved it, and I was doing floorspots in folk clubs before my voice broke.

(Side issues: I read Law at University College, London, but not for very long. Then I was articled to a Kidderminster firm of solicitors where I spent four years being a bad lawyer after which I worked ineffectually for a public relations consultancy for a time and then spent a year not selling computer systems.)

In 1979 I married Janet. She and our elder daughter Emily now live in Australia, where  Emily is doing postgrad Mediaeval stuff at Sydney University. Maisie, our younger daughter, is at Uni of Wales (Aber), doing Scenographics. I dunno, ask her.

In 1981, I was gigging with Jim Cleary, still one of my favourite songwriters, and ex-Steve Gibbons Band guitarist Dave Carol. (Dave toured the U.S. coast-to-coast with The Who and Little Feat and can therefore trump everyone's gig stories.)

This trio was supporting Telephone Bill and the Smooth Operators at The Manor House in Stratford when the Bills' front man Nick Barraclough invited me to do a solo gig at the Cambridge Folk Club and made sure that another band, Three Point Turn, came to see me. They did, and invited me to join them, beginning a geographically inconvenient habit of playing with Cambridge bands, including Parisian swing combo The Usual Suspects whose laid-back approach to the genre I spoil from time to time.

That Cambridge gig also marked the beginning of the solo career, and in 1983, I finally and gratefully gave up proper jobs. You could say I 'went pro' but this would over-dignify it. More accurately, I laboured on building sites while I got some demo tapes together. These I took to Malcolm Stent of BBC Radio WM at Pebble Mill who duly played a couple of tracks and invited me onto his lunchtime show.

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