These days there are so many good tutorials you can follow from books, magazines, DVD’s videos, often with your favourite musician helping you along in front of the comfort of your own television, (and what is it with that Mel Bay chap? is there any instrument he can’t play? Mel Bay’s method for the Peruvian Nose Flute, Mel Bay’s Play Mandingo thumb piano in a week, How to get a tune out of an inflated sheeps lung using reeds and a bamboo drone etc) back then there was...nothing much! I gave up with the book after a few weeks and came up with my own idea. I sat down in front of the record player and played the sort of stuff I wanted to play. Who wanted to stumble along trying to play stuff like ‘Au Clare de la Lune’ from some reprinted 1930’s mandolin tutor written by some twat called Neville Goatsponge when I could play along with the Dubliners!

After about three months solid plonking I had mastered the art of playing along to the Dubs version of ‘Sam Hall’, a slowish piece involving some hefty tremelo, at last, I was there! I could play something! I can’t remember what came next but they came thick and fast after that first one, (although it was a few years before I got down to ‘the Masons Apron!’)

By 1972 my mate Suggie had begun to play the tin whistle and we’d also got a few Harmonicas between us and we’d sit around in my bedroom of an evening drinking my dad’s home brewed ale and seeing what we could play. That summer Suggie went on a school trip to Spain and came back with the most marvellous instrument, something I’d only ever seen the Corries play, a Bandurria, a Spanish instrument with 12 strings rather like a small guitar. This was a real breakthrough! it sounded great along with the Mandolin and our playing rose to new heights! By this time we were listening to the Corries as well as the Dubliners and even...yes...the Spinners! who had their own TV show once a week.