Children always ask me how I became a writer and a storyteller so here is a brief sketch of how I got to where I am today.

EARLY DAYS

I was incredibly lucky to have parents and grandparents who were dedicated to giving me stories at every given opportunity. I was read to and spoken to from a very early age and if you were to ask my mother she could tell you tales of me sitting up in the pram, before I could speak, and 'burbling' stories to anyone who would care to listen.

At school and in the local church I had to get up and sing in a surplus and cassock and never really showed any aptitude for school. It was when I realised that reading was a doorway to a huge amount of information and enjoyment that I started to see the pleasure involved with learning. English language and writing became a fascination for me at school and I was the one who always won the speaking and writing competitions in Secondary school. This did mean having to stand up in front of 1,000 boys in a Grammar School and tell a story to them all. I can only say that the 10 shilling postal orders were worth it.

FOLK MUSIC AND STORYTELLING

 At school I was interested in folk music and playing the guitar and could trot out a few tunes before I left for Leeds University where I became an Agricultural Zoologist. I know that some of the fine musicians who played, and still play, on the folk circuit are some of the finest storytellers around. I would say that people like Dave Burland, Martin Carthy, Mike Harding, Jo-ann Kelly, Barbara Dickson, Derek Brimstone and so many more let me know how to get an audience to understand and enjoy a story.

I had one experience of storytelling in a pub in Leeds when as a surly 20 something I reluctantly sat down and reluctantly sat while a woman told a story. My scepticism was washed away after a few moments and I was hooked to the point that I begged to hear another story. It has only been in the past few years that I have remembered this encounter but her skill must have stuck with me because I try to inspire the same kind of fascination that I felt that night when I tell stories.

Directly after graduating I went and played in Belgium, Holland and Germany and this 'few weeks' turned into nearly three years of touring on the Continent.

It was during this time that I tried to learn the language of whatever country I was in. I had read somewhere that it is good idea to learn the language in the same way that children learn it, through the repetition and repeated listening to fairy stories.  It was through the reading of the tezt as I listened to the L.P.s that I got an understanding of many fairy stories from hearing 'Reepelsteeltge' and 'Hans and Grietje'. I was very lucky to stay with a fabulous family, the Caminadas, who helped me with pronounciation and my stumbling first attempts at speaking a foreign language.  

In 1977 I beame a full time professional singer and toured throughout Britain and Scotland. This continued until 1980 when I stayed at home and looked after my 3 children. In the process of caring for them I learnt a lot about the development of children and went on to do a PGCE in Early years teaching. While I looked after my children, every bedtime I got the chance to read them a vast amount of children's stories in hundreds of different genres and aimed at different ages. At the same time I taped the stories so that they could listen to them in bed and I believe it was here that I learned my skills in telling stories.

TEACHING AND DAILY EXPERIENCE 

When I was teaching I was given 'Celtic Fairy Tales' by Joseph Jacobs by another teacher who was going to throw it out. I was completely mesmerised by the strangeness and charm of these ancient stories and it has always been a huge inspiration and a touchstone for simple, forthright and utterly fantastic storytelling. I have given copies of the book to so many people over the years as birthday presents and Christmas gifts. It might have been collected over a hundred years ago but the content shows that the human condition and experience of emotions remains the same.  

INFLUENCES

Over the years I have had many experiences that have had a profound effect on my tale telling. Being a child of the 50's radio was everything. I vividly remember, as a child, anticipating and listening to the whole range of the BBC's Light Programme; 'Uncle Mac', 'Listen with Mother', 'Mrs. Dale's Diary', 'Quatermass', 'Dick Barton', 'Much Binding in the Marsh' and 'Journey into Space'. I know that their influence is in my own storytelling and writing in the depth of description and dialogue.

One of the most significant of recent influences would have to be the Mike Nesmith song/story "The Prison" from the late 1970's. It is a story that you listen to while you read the book. It is quite unnerving the way that the music beautifully coincides with the sense and sentiment of the text. It opened my eyes to the fact that a tale doesn't always have to have knights and fairies and kings in it. It can have a complex and insightful, modern approach with a great deal of contemporary context and remain mystical.

Vivian Stanshall and the Bonzo Dog Dooh-Dah band were firm favourites in the 1970s on the John Peel Radio Sessions. The 'Rawlinson's End' stories were incredibly funny and incisive and much imitated by me. I would listen to them endlessly and find the mixture of absurdity and biting, acidic sarcasm irresistible. 

By chance, in the mid seventies, I came across the American wits/ writers/ actors/ performers 'The Firesign Theatre' and was completely mesmerised by their range of anarchy, characterisation and precision recording. Although it is the spoken word it is arranged like a symphony with repeated, and repeatable, lines that blend and compliment to a surreal final movement that makes you listen to their brilliance again and again.

When I was a teacher in 1992 I 'inherited' a classroom that had a stack of old books that were due to be thrown away. One of them was a modest volume in a battered, green cardboard cover called "Celtic Fairytales" by Joseph Jacobs. It was a turning point in my development as a storyteller. I had never encountered such stories that reflected the whole of the human condition and it is and will always be a true friend.

By chance the reading of stories every night to my own children gave me an opportunity to dive into the great wealth of books that I had never read as a child. It also gave me access to some of the fine work by Terry Jones; 'Eric the Viking' and 'Fairy Tales' which we devoured and re-devoured on numerous occasions.    

For those of us of a certain age, the fabulous Johnny Morris with his television programmes 'Tales of the Riverbank' and 'Animal Magic' gave us an idea of how and when to use voices to represent characters. It is a great help to me in my own work to remember how he would have 'posh' camels and nervous hamsters speaking in his flights of fancy. 

In the mid-1980s John Sessions had a regular television programme about constructing stories from everyday household objects. I remember it to this day and was hugely influenced by his abiltity to create a witty and complete story, on-stage and in front of a live audience. At the time I thought that he was doing something that I could never achieve. Having 'made-up' stories at least four times a day, five days a week for thirty weeks of the year for seven years, I feel as if I am nearly getting the hang of it.

There are so many great, hardworking storytellers in this country that it would be difficult to name them all, but special mention should be made of Taffy Thomas MBE who basically made storytelling an accepted art in Britain. He, alongside the likes of Chris Bostock and the 'Bit Crack' team, Mike Rust, Bert Draycot and Eddie Lenahan made telling tales a respectable activity. They have all worked so hard to re-establish a fundemental art that could well have been lost to us all.  

I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked with the wonderful Keith Donnelly on many occasions. His enthusiasm, wit, charm and sense of fun have been a great inspiration ot me. I have taken his advice and lead on many storytelling sessions and he continues to mould the way that I view what I do. 

Last but not least, Michael Bentine, one of the original 'Goons' did a piece for television in the 1950s where he used a broken chair back to make up a story. With his wit and invention, the chair became a set of prison bars, a flag and a whole host of different components in an elaborate, frenetic story. If you get the chance to see it you will understand the ability to entertain and enthral an audience with seamless stories.  

WRITING

Writing was always something that I had done; song lyrics, poetry and verses as well as ideas for stories. It was only after watching a television serial in the 1980s over a period of twelve weeks that finished with the unnerving 'and then he woke up and it was all a dream' that I felt cheated and determined to write something better that had a sensible and fulfilling ending.

It prompted me, with my children's encouragement, to write a story that later became "Gerach's Road" which I taped for my children and their friends. I learned a lot about story construction in my first, stumbling steps at creating a story. I of course thought that I was going to be the darling of the 'Literati' and found myself festooned with huge garlands of rejection slips from publishers who hadn't even opened the first pages of the manuscript.

Undeterred I released it as an audio cassette and was rewarded with great reviews. Since then I have written a large number of stories, quite often 'to order', when people want a specific kind of a story about a particular theme or topic at school, and released over twenty CDs and DVDs which continue to get great reviews and make great presents... I've been told.

In the course of a day I will tell about eight traditional stories and make-up another four. If I do 12 stories a day, five days a week for thirty weeks a year that makes and average of 1,800 stories a year. If you multiply that by the seven years I have been working then that makes 12,600 stories.

I have got to tell you I never wake up and go 'Oh no I've got to tell stories today!'

One last fact; I do about 35,000 miles a year and if you multiply that by seven then it's a very long way.

WORKING IN SCHOOLS

Storytelling in schools came about through a series of coincidences and accidents. I had always told stories to my own children and as a teacher I was used to telling stories at the end of the school day. As it happens, I had been asked by a fantastic friend of mine, Terri Freeman, to tell a few stories on her radio show in Sunderland and this let me know that I could memorise the full sense of a story without it sounding forced or unnatural. Her encouragement let me explore the possibilities of telling stories on a part-time basis. One incident happened in a nursery when I was visiting a student when I was her college tutor. It was Christmas and the children were poorly and full of colds and stomach bugs and as they were being ill I told a story while the teacher sorted the ailing children out. Her remark afterwards was that I should take up storytelling as a full-time job.

I didn't think about what she had said for a few years, when I did a little research and sorted out some publicity and tested the market for the possibility of doing some storytelling on the side. As it happened my contract came to an end. The band that I was going to tour the USA with collpased and then I thought about doing storytelling as a full-time profession.

That was how it started in 1999 and that's what I do now. I am so glad that I do what I do. I feel as if I have the best job in the world and the support of so many of my family, friends and especially my wife Anne that I couldn't be luckier.