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I was doing OK until Santa brought me a late present of the Black Death (aka the Flu).

Mine of course, since I am a bloke, is military strength so that I have a voice like Paul Robeson eating a lump of coal and a nose like Rudolph (the Reindeer - not Hess).

I'm off to Glasgow for soon, so I'm hoping it clears up before then.

Donald Shaw, who runs the festival, is a bit of a genius and has devised the Classic Album Live series.

In previous years Dick Gaughan has performed , John Martyn and Paul Brady & Andy Irvine have done their classic duo album live on stage.

This year it's with his A Thousand Years of Popular Music, a terrific album that he put out a few years back with some truly amazing tracks on it.

To save you looking it up,here's RT's own quote on the subject: "The idea for this project came from Playboy Magazine. I was asked to submit a list, in late 1999, of the ten greatest songs of the Millennium.

Hah! I thought, hypocrites,they don't mean millennium, they mean twenty years - I'll call their bluff and do a real thousand-year selection.

My list was similar to the choices here on this CD, starting in about 1068, and winding slowly up to 2001.

That they failed to print my list among others submitted by rock's luminaries, is but a slight wound - it gave me the idea for this show.

The idea is that "popular music" comes in many forms, through many ages, and as older forms get superceded, sometimes the "baby is thrown out with the bathwater" - great ideas, tunes, rhythms, styles, get left in the dust of history, so let's have a look at what's back there, and see if still does the trick."

You can check out the track listing of the CD . A fairly eclectic list and probably not one that Playboy would have wanted up there with the others. Mind you, you never know, I've heard on the grapevine that Hugh Hefner was a dab hand on the Northumbrian Pipes.