version of “Jungle Love” in Welsh, remind me never to play you at Scrabble), which also went on to be a very popular title. But, of course, music was far from the only string to your bow, you were also doing a lot of freelance writing and reviewing back then, zines like ‘Splizz’ come to mind. I seem to recall you also wrote for “Big Issue Cymru” and that it was there that your now famed nickname of The Bard Of Ely came about. What do you remember of writing for zines in those days and what’s the story with regard the nickname?

SA: Yes, I used to really enjoy being involved in the fanzine or ‘zine’ culture both as a contributor and as a writer and networker, as well as being reviewed and interviewed in many of these publications. I did indeed get to be a regular columnist for ‘Big Issue Cymru’ which was based in Cardiff and the magazine gave me the title Bard of Ely. This was because they had previously reviewed my music and seen me performing at local gigs and they knew I was living on the Ely estate in the city.  Being a bard from a council estate appealed to my sense of humour too and I started using it as my stage name too. These days I am also known as Green Bard and the Tenerife Weekly newspaper in which I have had a column too has been calling me that.

MM: There were also books. The first I remember was “Herbs Of The Northern Shaman”, a fascinating journey through the “mind-altering plants of the northern hemisphere”. I still have the original 2000 edition published by Loompanics in the U.S.A., complete with black and white photos (good to see a new edition out with colour plates though!),  and I’d never part with it, in spite of seeing the silly prices that first one sells for on E-Bay and the like these days. It must have taken an immense amount of work putting together such an authoritative work. How did you first become interested in the subject and to what kind of levels did you take the research (it’s okay, the police aren’t going to read this website, promise)?

SA:  I have thought an interest in herbs may have been from a past life because I do have an extensive knowledge of the subject and a great affinity with herbalism on many levels.  For my book I actually grew a lot of the plants from seeds I bought on the Internet or from other suppliers I found.  There used to be an excellent business called ‘Gnostic Garden’. I had plants of deadly nightshade, mandrake, peyote and Syrian rue all growing in pots in my house in Ely. I have experienced many of the herbs in my book but not all and some are very dangerous so a warning is given. They are included for education purposes.

MM: Of course they are...

SA: I put most of the book together in the summer of 1997 when I was able to use the computers at the library of Coleg Glan Hafren to type up and save my work. I was a media student at the time there and got a BTEC National Diploma in Media Studies as well as A-grades in A-levels in Media Studies and Film Studies. Sadly Loompanics folded and I had to find a new publisher when “Herbs Of The Northern Shaman” went out of print. This allowed time for additional material to be added to the book and a whole new selection of colour photos to be taken by Katrinia Rindsberg from Germany.  It wasn’t until 2009 that I got a second publishing deal for my book and the second edition was published by O-Books in 2010.

MM: You and I only ever met the once, and that just the briefest of overnight stops at our old Surrey base, but you left quite an impression. I thought you were a bit weird, and coming from someone like me that most people think is a bit weird, that has to be quite a compliment! I already knew you were into druid things, a personal friend of King Arthur, believed in alien spirits et al, but I STILL keep finding out more interesting things about you, even after all these years. Like the fact you’re in “The World’s Most Mysterious People” by Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe (Fortean heroes!), and that you have a BA Honours Degree in journalism (leave my phone alone!), film and broadcasting. I was thinking you should write an autobiography… so tell us how “Hummadruz And A Life Of High Strangeness” came about and how you feel about your life being out there in the open for all to see?

SA: Yes, I remember coming to your place and meeting you in person, and that would have been after I finished recording with The Somethings. We had been at Raven Studios in Camberley. I don’t remember how I got to where you were living though and I hadn’t been drinking at that point, though I made up for this later on! “Hummadruz And A Life Of High Strangeness” came about in suitably strange circumstances. I have been running a fan-site at Facebook for environmentalist and author David de Rothschild after he began following me at Twitter and we got into correspondence, but a lot of conspiracy theorists who have read David Icke books think David is a Reptilian and part of The Illuminati. These people often indulge in hate-mail and trolling and one of them had posted curses on the fan-site.