Wild Willy Barrett

Few performers make a raw egg part of the act, but Roger John Barrett, better known as Wild Willy Barrett, has built a career on exactly that kind of unpredictability. The Aylesbury-born multi-instrumentalist is best known for his collaborations with John Otway, yet his playing ranges across folk, blues, psychedelia, pop and punk rock. Virtuoso fiddle work, a crowded array of stringed instruments and slide guitar played with an egg (the 'egg-necking' of his live shows) sit alongside dry, quick onstage wit.

Barrett comes from Aylesbury, picking up the ukulele at four and gigging regularly by fifteen. His first commercial recordings appeared on Guitar Workshop, issued by Transatlantic Records in 1973. He has since toured with Squeeze, Madness and Steeleye Span, and played for George Hamilton IV. In the early 1980s he ran the Black Eye and Red Eye labels, and his mid-decade work moved towards electronics, culminating in Organic Bondage. He closed the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2009, and in 2012 he formed French Connection, whose first gig was at The Flying Shack in Cheltenham that November. He continues to tour.