ANYONE much under 50 had probably never heard of him.

And the mostly over-50s in the capacity audience at The Brewhouse last Tuesday were probably only there for one song.

Ralph McTell may have only had the one hit – just in case you didn’t know, it was The Streets of London – but he proved himself a talented singer songwriter.

The evening began with Ralph on the guitar and harmonica, which conjures up images of Bob Dylan – and the former compares to the latter as a top rate poet.

His songs contained acute observations on family members, friends, his time in Paris, teenage love, Croydon, the Civil War and ecology.

And talking of ecology, he was even flogging a few jute bags with the words of one of his songs on.

Brave man that he is, Ralph even dared to play a gospel song with highly ungospel sentiments – although it had taken him 34 years to pluck up the courage to perform live for the first time a song he penned in 1974.

The music was great, but Ralph seemed shy and ill at ease standing on stage alone addressing his audience and I’m sure that not everyone was overly interested in his encyclopaedic knowledge of guitars.

One other small gripe.

As his songs are not universally known, it was understandable that people weren’t singing along.

But just before he played that song, he made the mistake of asking us to sing along – with the result that my neighbour drowned out my enjoyment of the very reason I had gone.