Star O The Bar

In the drily hilarious notes to his very long overdue debut recording, Davie Robertson begs us not to call him “a singer-songwriter, nor (Heaven forfend) a folk-singer” but rather to refer to him as a “composer of Scots songs”.

He also tells us that he developed his voice through years of “pontificating at school assemblies and bellowing at bairns”, and has been writing songs since the mid-1960s, chiefly for the purpose of “amusing the regulars at Haddington Folk Club”.

I’d say they were amused, all right. From the gross-out humour of ‘The Hanky’ and ‘Strict Hygiene’ to ‘The Chimp and the Poodle’, a savage, up-to-the-minute allegory about Bush, Blair and Iraq, there’s plenty to keep any listener chuckling. Robertson accompanies himself in rather rudimentary fashion on the accordion, and more tunefully on the small pipes.