It’s always nice to discover a performer for the first time. I had never heard of Darren Hayman until Buzz, Buzz, Buzz started to promote last night’s concert in the Everyman Studio – which is strange really because Darren Hayman is just the sort of act I like.

To say he is quirky is to do him an injustice. He is more than that, he is a one-off, unique and truly eccentric. He is not particularly musical – his guitar playing is fairly basic and his voice manifests itself more in what he says than in how he says it.

One always tries to find comparisons, it’s inevitable. So what is Darren Hayman like?

Well, I suppose the closest is Loudon Wainwright but there is an awful lot of Tiny Tim there too. Mr Hayman sees things from his own standpoint and clearly did not read any manuals on lyric construction. His is a song writing world in which moon never rhymes with June and subjects include a lament for two 1950s Russian dogs who were sent into space. If I were to make a comparison it would be less of a comparison, more of pin-pointing an identity.

If you can imagine Adrian Mole becoming a singer-songwriter then you have Darren Hayman. His songs are of middle-aged (they are both 43) teenage angst with titles like I Know I Fucked Up and You’re So Out of My League. He also has dug up some songs by William Morris and sings them with relish in spite of their viewpoints being diametrically opposed – Morris the eternal, Socialist optimist, Hayman the harbinger of doom. Pessimistic he may be but his songs are also heavily laden with humour, astute observations and, more importantly, life.

Darren Hayman likes to do things his own way. He sings without a microphone and even his guitar is odd, a 4-string Fender lookalike tenor guitar, going through a Vox amp the size and power of a box of tissues. Ever conscious of his audience, he was worried that his newly bought, rather tight jeans would reveal too much to the people behind him as he sat at the piano (which he thought looked like a dodgem car).

I loved Darren Hayman and my thanks go to Corin Hayes of Buzz, Buzz, Buzz for bringing him to Cheltenham. There are lots of clips on YouTube so you can, as they say, check him out.   Michael Hasted