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Preparation and planning for these #WivChat sessions are as intense as the recording process itself. I either spend a lost minute searching the esteemed Wivenhoe Encyclopaedia for a sniff around about my latest victim, or send an anonymous email to the lovely Mrs X, my fountain of knowledge (and free cake) for all that is happening on the Wivehhoe hyperlocal beat.

Not so however for my latest guest.

Brian Ford is a name and face that I recognised from around the town. Different folk have been telling me that he is a character worth pursuing and pinning down in Studio #WivChat.

My background research on Brian wasn’t exactly down a blind alley, but my preparation notes simply read: Folk Club / Panto.

Brevity is often the bungling conversationalists best friend.

To my great delight, Brian rather warmed to an email from someone who he has never met, asking him to come around to his kitchen / Studio #WivChat, have a coffee and then sing some songs all about lonely petunias.

Our opening handshake didn’t exactly fill me with confidence in completing the gaps in my notepad. “I’m not from Wivenhoe!” declared Brian, leaving me wondering how #WivChat was going to fill the next hour or so with conversation about exactly why he isn’t from Wivenhoe.

Um…

Have faith in the healing power of a strong cup of coffee and the art of conversation. Plus a Tom Paxton song always helps.

Despite his polite protests profiling himself as a man from not around this parish, Brian has contributed immensely to Wivenhoe social and cultural life over the course of the past two decades.

In the conversation below we explore Brian’s move from Colchester to Alresford, how the Folk Club first led him to Wivenhoe, and then further thigh slapping (and mighty fine scripts) with the Wivenhoe Pantomime Group.

It is fair to say that Brian is a folkie at heart. He came to Studio #WivChat claiming, “I only know three chords.” Modesty is a fine trait in a man. Three songs later - and a chord repertoire that would allow for an avant-garde jazz re-working of Mull of Kintyre - and the recording was a wrap.

Our conversation covers what makes Wivenhoe unique when compared to Alresford, the challenges in staging a successful monthly folk club in a rural estuary town, and how you go about taking a traditional pantomime story and then twisting it totally to have a hyperlocal angle.

A little over a hour later after Brian first arrived at Studio #WivChat and my notepad was full of scribbles and observations, we had an hour of broadcast material and I was left feeling that Brian is truly a lovely, lovely bloke.

And so with apologies to Mrs X - I think your work is done.

Preparation?

Pah.