Ade sees the passion in folk.

Byline: Dave Freak

ADRIAN Edmondson couldn't be happier. "I'm like a pig in poo!" he grins with a smile that stretches from ear to ear. "And I probably smell just as bad."

The reason for his gleeful mood is his band, Adrian Edmondson And The Bad Shepherds, a trio whose raison d'tre has been to blend classic incendiary late 70s punk and early 80s new wave with traditional Celtic folk. Two very different styles of music, but Ade's made it gel. He brings his band to Bilston's Robin 2 tonight and Birmingham's Glee Club on Sunday.

"Punk and folk - it just works!" he cries. "It's a glorious thing that fills me with so much joy. I've done over 70 shows this year, and normally after doing that many gigs you'd begin to get tired, bored, fed up, but I'm not jaded at all. The songs are glorious!" As punk exploded, the young Ade was at Manchester Uni' where he met future partner-in-comedy Rik Mayall.

"Then I lived for a year in Birmingham.

I married young - like you do - and my wife worked at Winson Green Prison. We lived in a caravan in Sutton Coldfield before getting a council house in Tamworth. It was when me and Rik got together, and Rik was living at his parents' house in Droitwich. I think we only did about four gigs that year though, and I was working at the Tax Office up along the Hagley Road."

Joining Nigel Planer, Dawn French, future wife Jennifer Saunders and other up-and-coming comedy talent their Comic Strip Presents... series launched Channel 4 in 1982, while BBC2's The Young Ones, also starring Rik and Ade, redefined British comedy.

Since, Edmondson has played Reading Festival (as spoof metal act Bad News), scored a number one single with Cliff Richard, directed pop promos, and appeared on shows as diverse as Hell's Kitchen and Holby City. However, after his recent ITV sitcom Teenage Kicks narrowly missed re-commissioning, it seems it's music which is going to keep him busy for the foreseeable future.

"This band is booked up a year from now - I've just taken three bookings for next October and April, May and June are already heavily booked. It's really good fun. We're already doing about 20-odd festivals next year," he says.

Edmondson confesses the idea behind The Bad Shepherds came about purely by chance. Acquiring a mandolin after a heavy drinking session, he decided to try and play a few old punk tunes.

"They just sounded immediately different.

If you played them on acoustic guitar they'd sound a bit... dull, but on mandolin they sounded different, like you were reappraising the songs. It got interesting," he says. Then guesting with the Bonzo Dog Do Dah Band, songwriter Neil Innes was impressed by Ade's mastery of the instrument and suggested he find "some white hot folk musicians" to play with. Ade was enthused.

"I'd had a folk resurgence. Folk used to be in the charts - then there were a lot of folk elements in rock. Then punk came along and I found that too exciting and got into punk. But then in 2002/2003 me and Rik were on tour doing Bottom in Sheffield and I was in a corridor between two venues and I could hear Kate Rusby and John McClusker next door and I thought, what was that? That was what I wanted! So I started to follow modern folk and got interested in deep folk like the Watersons - so I'd got all that in the back of my mind when I picked up that mandolin."

And within no time, Ade had pieced together a set-list featuring such punk and new wave classics as The Sex Pistol's God Save The Queen, Squeeze's Up The Junction, The Undertones' Teenage Kicks, The Clash's London Calling, and The Jam's Down In The Tube Station At Midnight plus tracks by Kraftwerk, The Buzzcocks and The Ramones.

Fused with traditional folk jigs and reels, the re-mixed songs often initially confound audiences.

"The great thing is that we heavily rearrange the songs so often people don't know what they are until we're 30 seconds or so into the song. We entice people in with punk, and give them folk and they light up! A ceilidh goes up and up and up and up, and no one can keep still."

TicketInfo ADRIAN EDMONDSON AND THE BAD SHEPHERDS Tonight: Robin 2, Mount Pleasant, Bilston (01902 401211) Sunday November 1: Glee Club, The Arcadian, Birmingham (0871 472 0400).

CAPTION(S):

Happy: A few beers and a mandolin sparked Adrian Edmondson's new direction.