ashley's own biography

• I am born on 26th of January, 1945, in north London.
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• Linda Hagger sits on my lap in the playground at infants school. I decide that I like girls.
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• I become obsessed with acting out the American civil war with plastic toy soldiers in the rockery of our garden.
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• I attend my first professional football match at White Hart Lane. It is Spurs versus Cardiff City.
  I am hooked and become a lifelong fan...of Cardiff (just joking !).
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• I save up my paper round money and go to Krantz in Shaftesbury Avenue to buy an imported button-down collar shirt.
  I am the only person in north London with one.
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• I leave school at the earliest opportunity with next to no qualifications and amazingly get a job right away as a trainee journalist.
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• American banjo player Derroll Adams becomes a hero. He has an earring in his left ear.
  One hot Summer's day in 1967 my American girl-friend pierces my ear. An ice-cube and needle are used.
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• I grow a beard and look like a Hilliard miniature.
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• My first professional group is Fairport Convention. Jimi Hendrix gets up onstage and plays my bass with the group.
  I stand around, glowing.
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• M1 motorway, the early hours of the morning, 12 May, 1969. The Darkest Day.
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• Fairport invents British Folk-Rock.
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• Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger are very kind to me. I never forget this.
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• I form Steeleye Span and Martin Carthy and I are forced to defend our position that we aren't in it for the money
  to an irate folk festival gathering.
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• I marry my folk heroine.
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• I become obsessed with traditional folk song and dance music in the early '70s and live in rural Sussex. I buy an acoustic bass guitar.
  Thus glam-rock and prog-rock pass me by.
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• I get the call to go with my Albion Band to work at the National Theatre in London in 1977. I've never worked so hard in my life.
  Thus punk music also passes me by. (Phew, saved again !).
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• Angela Carter interviews me for a Radio Times article.
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• The Albion Band is barracked by a folkie at the Royal Albert Hall. Hooray !
  I can say I'm like my hero Dylan at last.
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• I act disgracefully and my marriage comes to an end.
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• My first performance of a one-man acting show. I am terrified.
  The fire alarm goes off and the event becomes a friendly farce.
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• I become obsessed with folk dancing and travel the length and breadth of the country, dancing all the way.
  Together with special friends I form the Albionettes, a mixed sex dance group.
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• Dancing under the rose leads to the writing and recording of my 'masterpiece', By Gloucester Docks I Sat Down and Wept.
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• Near the docks I get a rose tattoo on my right arm. I write the first of three sonnets about it.
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• It is 1989 and the Albions are delivered to a South Atlantic mountain top by a Chinook.
  At the start of the first number the entire male audience is up dancing with each other led by their commanding officer.
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• I move to the north of England. It smells different to the south.
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• The Albion Band goes "unplugged". By a few months we are the first act to do this.
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• My son Blair is born on the 11th of February, 1992.
  I weep. His mother glows.
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• I sink to what some may call the lowest point in my career. A Folk Aerobics CD is released.
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• I form the Rainbow Chasers, which makes great original music. It passes the media by.
  What do you expect from a bunch of idiots who hail Oasis as a great group ?
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• I become obsessed with black-and-white French films from of the '30s, '40s and early '50s.
  Marcel Carné becomes my God and Elina Labourdette my Goddess.
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• In Glasgow my son wins the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards' Horizon Award for best up-and-coming youngster.
  I weep. His mum glows.
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• Dressed as Cecil Sharp I cycle onto the stage of the Royal Albert Hall in the BBC Folk Awards.
  This time no-one shouts abuse.
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• Beards are back in fashion. My son looks like a Hilliard miniature.
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• I stand on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence one morning eating pistachio gelato. The sun shines.
  It doesn't get any better than this..
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