Hi folks, well shall we start at the beginning. I was just any normal little blue eyed kid (still am in my Mom's eyes) with blond hair and the fact that butter wouldn't melt in my mouth, you know, the kind of kid that would spend hours building Lego or riding my tricycle down the slope round the back of my house, trying to see how many slugs I could run over or playing board games with my mom and dad. Then it all fell apart!!!

When I was about 7 years old my Mom and Dad, along with some of their friends, started the local morris team, now the world famous Ironmen and Seven Gilders. I then entered into a whole new way of life… pubs, late nights and weekends away under canvas, meeting loads and loads of fantastic people. As well as the morris team Mom, Dad and some of their very close friends were running a very successful folk club in Ironbridge, called the Meadow Folk Club. This was run on a Friday night and occasionally they would have a guest performer, that when the club was over, would come back to our house and stay the night drinking large amounts of booze. People like Vin Gurbutt, Tom Paxton, The Watersons, Martin Carthy and Tommy Dempsey to name but a few. These people became good friends.

My musical talents (Ha Ha Ha) started when one of the musicians from the morris team, a lovely bloke called Jez Dunn, was playing his fiddle in one of the many Sunday pub sessions. It was no good I was hooked, I wanted one too. Mom and Dad scrimped and saved and bought me a second hand one for Christmas, and then the practising began.

I carried on playing it through my schooling and loved jamming in pub sessions, I used to play it in the morris band and some would say I became quite good!!!

Having now been launched into this whole new world of drinking late and travelling around the country to folk festivals, I started to meet people left, right and centre. A group of us became really good friends with Earlsdon Morris Team, from Coventry. Many weekends I would go down on the train and stay with Tool and Ben (Bass and Box player out of Peeping Tom) and play my fiddle with there team. This also led to me playing my fiddle with Peeping Tom on several occasions. Having made these contacts and many new friends, I felt that life was good.

As I progressed through life with its ups and downs I was now meeting some very influential people, which would stand by me and be there to give me valuable advice. One of these people was a gentleman called Ken Speller, sadly no longer with us, (Uncle Ken to those in the Morris Team). He was a box player and the band master for the morris team. As I remember, he was great fun and full of stories that you could listen to over and over again. Oh yes… sitting in the back seat of the coach, listening to Ken telling us stories about Delores the Dragon, fond memories.

Ken was married to a girl called Jenny, and they were very good friends with my Mom and Dad. Mom and Jenny formed a folk agency called the "Two Jenny's folk agency" this was it for me they had all sorts of people on their books, including a small band called the "Oyster Ceilidh Band".

Well, it so happened that I was at that stage of my schooling when we had to do work placements. All my class mates were off to factories or working in shops for two weeks…not me mate!!! I was off to Canterbury to spend a fortnight on the road with Oyster Band, who were doing a lot of Ceilidhs in the area of Telford. They all became very close friends (and still are). Thankfully for me, Mom and John Jones convinced the school to let me do my work placement with a bunch of up and coming stars.

It was great staying with John and Doe in there little cottage on the edge of some fantastic woodland walks. John was still teaching at this point so every day I would go into Canterbury with him or Doe and spend the day at "Longport" a house were Ian Telfer and Alan Prosser used to live. Here we would drink copious amounts of fresh coffee and Alain would teach me the Bass guitar. This along with Ian's amazing fiddle playing proved to be a very big influence on my musical outlook on life. Not only did I get an insight into how one of the worlds leading folk rock bands was born, I also saw a whole new way of life. It was probably one of the highlights of my life.

Having spent two weeks with John Jones he became a very close friend and some one to look up to, and what's more he played the melodeon, (oh boy, now I really wanted one of them too!!!).

On my return from a very stressful and hard working two weeks (yeh right!), it was time to knuckle down to my exams. I then stayed on at school to complete my education in the 6th form. Whilst I was at the 6th form I had the chance to do yet some more work experience. This time I chose to go and spend two weeks with a very famous street theatre company "The Salami Brothers". We did a two week tour starting in the north and finishing in London, working with schools as well as street theatre performances. I also worked with them at Sidmouth Folk Festival.

After my education I started working and trying to fit the busy life of the folk world around various jobs, such as factory work, a four year spell at a well known fast food outlet and 18 months as a trainee manger for Trust House Forte. Then one day the phone rang and it was Ben Woodward from Peeping Tom. He was offering me a week's work as a sound engineer at Whitby Folk Festival… this was what I had been waiting for, it was great.

I then spent the next 6 years as their dep. sound engineer when their regular sound engineer, Graham Bradshaw, was unavailable. Along with this came a very close mate, Laurence (Tool the bass player's son). He is probably my closest friends I'll every have, more like a brother really.

When I wasn't needed as their sound engineer Loz and I would go out on as many bookings as possible as their road crew. Oh boy could we tell you some stories, but the band made us sign the official secrets act…sorry!!!!!!!!!

While I was spending a lot of time in their home town of Coventry, what happened next was to prove to be life changing and totally out of the blue.

One night at their monthly Ceilidhs, Loz my best mate was flirting with this lady. Me not wanting to be out done, asked her for a dance. She accepted and it went like this. The dance involved the men dancing towards the ladies and giving your partner a quick kiss! All was fine, except that we never went back out, we just stayed there kissing and the dance continued around us. We have been married almost 13 years now and share our life with four fabulous children too. Life has never been better.

Cate and I formed a morris team in Coventry called Naked Lady and set ourselves a challenge to see how quickly we could get a booking at Sidmouth International Folk Festival. Well it only took two years. Shortly after this, we moved to Shropshire and sadly Naked Lady folded within the year.

We are now both involved in the Ironmen and Severn Gilders. Cate is currently the ladies squire and I am doing my third term in office as their band master, but not on the fiddle, I had now perfected the art of the Melodeon and became yet another person who could only play in pub sessions if its in the key of D or G. Not any more I've now mastered the keys of E minor and A minor too, but this really requires maximum concentration and minimum alcoholation.

After some hard practising and dedication to my box playing I was honoured to be asked to fill in for the very talented Lisa from "All Blacked Up" on a number of occasions as she was doing exams for work at the time. This confirmed that this was what I really wanted to do. I wanted to be on stage and playing my box!!!!

About four years ago, a member of the Ironmen passed away, he had a heart attack at practice one night and a few of us decided to do a benefit ceilidh for him, so some of my friends decided to put a band together for the event. It was great but as most of the band was away up north at university, we only managed a couple of gigs. Well time moves on and they have finished their hard lives as students. Luckily two of them moved back down to Telford, to seek employment and pay off their student debts, so I ran the idea through that we put the band together, that we had talked about for so long. Matt K.P, Jake, Cate and myself were very keen but we were missing the guitar section, so we contacted a good friend of ours from Coventry, Gerry (the strummer) who jumped at the chance and Jake found us a fantastic guy called Matt (he's a pleasant plucker). So along with Cate, as our full time caller and Nagger/Manager, Ceilidhography was born.