The Early Days: Guitars and singing was never really my bag; and when singing became my bag, guitar was somebody else's bag; and when guitars and singing became my bag, song-writing was just something I was glad other people did so that I had something to sing. 2 years of singing other peoples songs in South East London boozers and people shouting "do Yellow again [for the 5th time] or I'll cut you" was enough for me to really want to stay in my bedroom and write myself.
Early on I found it difficult to write what I wanted to, (much as I am finding now writing this biog (biogs were definitely never my bag!)) but slowly things happened to me that I felt were perhaps worthy of a song.
One day a friend called and in the middle of a fairly routine conversation, asked me "How is your girlfriend?". I replied "She moved to Putney" He said, "There's a song in that" and shortly got writ The Putney Song. Although I had dabbled in some autobiographical stuff before, this was when I all of a sudden felt permitted to sing about what had happened to me. The odd strategically placed obscenity was merely there to help it along the way (honest!).
Thanks for getting down this far by the way; have a sweetie.

Before the Boozers: I grew up listening to lot of boys and guitars really. Lots of songs for stadiums to wean me off the never ending repeat of the Bob Dylan/Joan Baez repertoire that I always associate with family car journeys and Sundays in the winter at my parents house. Not in a bad way, it's just you can only hear the times they are a-changing and the night they drove old dixie down 2146 and 3892 times respectively before going insane (you'll be glad to hear Oasis and U2 usurped the two sixties folk stars before the count on the insanometer crept into red)
Watching the indie rockers of the nineties get away with so much was a genuine inspiration. I thought that they were great. Really. I was sixteen and bored of so many things and then someone stuck Definitely Maybe in my ears and said "listen to this". And I did. Constantly for a whole summer. (For a whole summer read 1/2 a decade).
You can perhaps tell I liked Oasis. Then I got my mitts on an acoustic and a big book of every Beatles song ever written (ever) and I played spent a school holiday in my room with an 8 Track recorder and made my first album. Lennon/McCartney (whoever they are) had apparently done the un-gentlemanly thing and copyrighted it all so I had to shelve it.
Feeling cheated and despondent I went to Cardiff to do a degree in acting. But the lure of them South London pubs were just to much for me so I hung up my acting slacks (to the annoyance of many of the best West End dance troupes) and got gigging.

After the Boozers: I carried on writing, much with the same philosophy - that I should stick to personal stuff and the universal stuff will look after itself. It took a while to fully understand that I don't really need to explain that. That it's just what I have ended up doing. But then, things do take time. Even if all you realise is that Dylan and Baez were right and Oasis were not. Or the other way round. Or there's no such thing as right and wrong. And I'm still writing now. Look... See..

So I think that's me. Anything I've left out will probably end up in a song before long - so should you want more [shameless plug alert] come down and have a listen: "The biog of an autobiographical singer songwriter is his songs" ha ha - what a cop-out. Thanks for reading.