I’ve recorded hundreds of albums over my professional life and few I could point to with pride. Dick Gauchan's True & Bold would be one such. The record was made in support of the British miners in 1985 and circumstance came about that I would produce it with him. I felt privileged given it was on first hearing Dick that I properly got into folk music. I realised it was more than the wooly beards.

I particularly liked this Euan MacColl song. It's about young men being initiated into working the pits. In this country people don't go down pits anymore and that's probably a measure of progress. Maybe. But our culture doesn't do male Initiation much at all now and I'm not so sure something might be lost there.

Gauchan is an intellectual, a thinker rich in ideas. That’s rare in the music business. He would arrive from Edinburgh around midday and sometimes wax well into the evening. Then we'd do a few hours work and he would travel home at midnight. Good job.