We have been listening to him play keys for decades, his fingers Boogie Woogieing across the ivories while vocalists from Tom Jones to Gladys Knight croon by his side.
This New Year’s Eve he will, as ever, be tinkling into 2023 with a good few more on his Annual Hootenanny. But today, I’m listening to Jools Holland sing.
“Falderi, Falderaaa…” he chirps, enunciating with his finest southeast London twang, remembering a time he heard the German folk song The Happy Wanderer drift out of a boozer in Greenwich, London, into an early summer’s evening when he was just 17.
