I couldn't finish it - Rated 
Mark Radcliff's late night radio one show practically defined my teenage years but I am sorry to say that I could not finish this book. Despite being very interested in the subject matter (folk music, Nick Drake especially), I could not get past the absolute lack of character development, the clunky, unbelievable dialogue, the name-dropping of beers and frankly, the misogyny. I can accept that Radcliff can't write -he's a brilliant DJ, we can't all do everything, but I expected his views on women to be a little bit more contemporary. In the half of the book I have read, there is one main female character; a delicate, anorexic little flower who Ed, the protagonist, is promising to defend at every turn. If Radcliff had spent a little more time defining his characters and a little less time marshalling every northern cliche he could find into action, this might have been a good book. As it is... awful!
Mills and Boon do folk - Rated
Dear oh dear. This is an extended fifth form English story. The 'hero' of the story is a complete d*ckhead. Impossible to be interested in him. And then we are expected to believe that his 'wonderful' ex girlfriend would return to him and turn down the rich guy.
Next book in the series will no doubt detail their life together on benefits - complete with wife beating episodes, drugs, petty crime and prison.
Overall - a waste of paper.
dissapointing - Rated 
I love Mark Radcliffe as a broadcaster and enjoyed his show business book but this came as a real disappointment.
The main character is a complete pain in the arse who complains from beginning to end despite the fact that he is a total looser he has apparently been sacked from a lecturers job and returns to find everyone elase in town stuck at the mental age of 17. No one seems to have a job or a relationship which is just as well as there are only two female characters in the whole town under the age of 60.
Our hero ed moans, gets drunk, gets violent and cant get over once having had a relationship with one of the aforementioned females.
Even the folk club dosnt ring true as it seems to be well attended by talented performers!!
Anyway after a lot of grumbling and sulking, usually about things that happened 20 years ago, an improbable bit of drama is introduced, our hero improbably gets his job back and we can all heave a sigh of relief that its all over!
Very folk in good! - Rated 
I loved this book.Radcliffe is funny and you can read this even if you have no knowledge of Folk music (like me) and still enjoy it.So therefore I didn't get the Nick Drake clock tower joke referred to by others here.Well written and about half way through you are hooked by the feeling that this cannot end particularly happily.Only minor gripes really are that most of the characters dialogue with eachother can be a little bit too sarcastic and therefore make you wonder what they actually like about eachother at all and that for me the central character Ed actually isn't as likeable as I felt he should be.Infact he comes across as a bit of a tosser with a possible drink/anger management problem.This might be more noticeable because the book is written in the first person so therefore you are meant to "Feel" more of his character.That aside though a great,quick read.
Folk in Hull? - Rated 
I enjoyed Mark Radcliffe's autobiography and although this book, his first novel, is also easy to read I think it is much more forced than "Showbusiness: The Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Nobody". It's the low-key story of a group of Northern folk fans/performers and their fairly low-key lives. However, the very dramatic ending doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. There have been some truly terrible novels writen about the 'rock world' (and very few good ones) nice to see a novel about the 'folk world' for a change.
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