Tony Wright

Tony Wright saw his first Paris Busker at the age of fifteen whilst sitting at a cafe terrace on the Boulevard St.Germain. When the busker had finished his song and was ‘en train de passer le chapeau’, his excruciatingly embarrassing Mother suggested that as Anthony also played the guitar, he should give the nice man some money.

Under normal circumstances such a situation would have mortified the angst-ridden, awkward teenager, but not on this occasion. His world had suddenly woken up to the notion that he could live in Paris playing his guitar in the streets and not be held hostage in a world which seemed to have little in common with him.

Unfortunately his dream had to be put on hold until he had a little more autonomy over his life, or to put it another way, until his parent’s disappointment and disapproval, which he had carefully nurtured during his latter teens, reached a point where, when he boarded the boat train to Paris Gare du Nord, with a one-way ticket and £10 in his pocket, no-one was really surprised. In fact there was a communal sigh of relief.

Little has really changed over the forty years since that fateful day in late September 1981, except Tony now Scotland’s favourite cittern player.