Not being great at football (or soccer), I found that playing guitar in romantic settings was just as powerful a way to get girls to notice me. I got hooked by early Donovan songs, with a good helping of Bob Dylan and a bit later a heavy dose of Leonard Cohen, and all of these proved to work a charm. As my parents insisted on me doing an honest day’s work rather than becoming a singer and actor, I spent the next decades in a day job, which I loved, as a teacher of English and of English linguistics, but with music always a mainstay, centred around the acoustic music and the songs – mainly – of the British Isles (with occasional forays into Americana, blues and rock’n’roll). And then Taradiddle happened, the result of a number of extremely happy accidents, in fact, a dream come true: vocal harmonies in a repertoire of songs that is based on whatever eclectic pleasures – “sort of seriously” cultural as well as straightforwardly guilty – explored and enjoyed together with two genuinely lovely friends.
