BOB DYLAN

Bob Dylan is 70 today. Born Robert Zimmerman in Minnesota, he became one of the most influential songwriters ever, and is still going strong after a career lasting 50 years.

I was too young to really know him in the sixties, so he was never one of my absolute favourites (unlike, say, Jethro Tull, the Jam, or the Eagles). But he wrote so many songs, it is hard not to like some of them. His best work in my view was when he collaborated with the Band, who were very talented in their own right. I also loved the first Travelling Wilburys album, another collaborative effort.

I once got drunk and stayed up all night in Oxford in a queue in order to be sure of buying a ticket to a Bob Dylan concert when the theatre opened in the morning. The episode stuck in my mind, because one of my fellow drunk queuers managed to dislocate his shoulder while we were playing with a tennis ball. We got it back in again, though; and got a ticket.

Walter Blotscher