Your most famous song is Streets of London , did you ever expect it to take off in the way that it did?

Nearly 400 artists have recorded it. It has been translated into many languages and it’s used in school as a teaching aid and in churches. Most recently it was translated into Serbo-Croatian. The song has a career all on its own. I don’t own the song because just like a lot of young men and women at the time, we signed publishing deals which weren’t always to our best advantage. I’m getting on, I’m elderly and to think it’s played around the world is so humbling. The song has changed my life and people never seem tired of hearing it, which suits me. I still play it every time I go out and I’m not embarrassed by it. I know the sentiment is much the same and I know the affect it has because I still get letters from people who’ve heard it for the first time. It’s nearly 60 years old and it flew around the world by itself.

Six decades on, do you ever get sick of playing it?

I’m not blasé, it’s not like I have a string of hits. I accidentally had one hit and that’s it. It was around for four years before we recorded it and it went to number two in the British charts. It sold 90,000 copies in one day around Christmas time that year. The Irish audience identified with the hardness of being in London when they came over looking for work.

Read more: Singer Joe Mac on losing his son, raising his granddaughter and his long-standing marriage

Do you make any money from it or has it been lost in the deals you’ve signed?

Not really. It made its money when it was a hit song. I still get cross over the deals that were done back in the day and because I was so naive, but I’m not the only one. I do get satisfaction over what the song has brought me and how it has changed my life. There are people out there who are far more musically talented than I will ever be, but I had the good fortune to write that song. To this day, I’m still driven to write in the same way I was driven back then. I don’t worry about hits or radio play, I write because I want to.

When you think back to busking in Paris, which is where you got your inspiration for the song, it was probably a time where English people weren’t travelling as much as they do now.

Firstly, I had just come to the end of a relationship I had been in since I was 17 and I was very depressed. I was working in a timber yard in south London and it was miserable November weather. My mate suggested going to Paris with our guitars and there was a romantic sense of going there instead of being in Croydon. A wonderful adventure unfolded and I met my wife and we’ve been together for 50 odd years now. I got to experience being a potless broke musician strumming away on the streets for five months. I came home and I had much improved as a guitar player, as well as having lost some inhibitions. I’ve always had that empathy for people, which has been a burden at times because I care about things, but that helps as a writer. When you have a sense of caring about what other people are going through, your songs will resonate more with people and that’s what my audience likes. I always aim to hit the soul. After leaving Paris I got invited by Wizz Jones, who is a legend in England, to perform at the summer sessions. It was there I got discovered and I signed a contract with a record label. The rest, as they say, is history.

Are you excited to take to the stage in Ireland?

I’m really excited. I’ve toured in Ireland in lots of ways, but this is my first concert tour. We’ve been working on it for quite some time and we’ll be hitting north, south, east and west.

Visiting artists always say the Irish audience is unique.

The enthusiasm is brilliant and people always speak to you like you’re an old friend. They’re very familiar with the songs, so I’m always charmed and delighted to be in Ireland. In fact, I nearly always need a holiday when I get back home afterwards. I was talking to [comedian] Billy Connolly, who is a big friend of mine, and he said that whenever Irish dates would appear on an artist’s calendar, even way back in the 30s or 40s, the audience used to be so joyous. I remember the greeting Laurel and Hardy got, they rang the bells out when they got to Cobh. Stan and Ollie couldn’t believe that people had rowed out in their boats to meet them. Music is a huge part of Irish culture and for people like me it’s like coming home when we play here. I love the intimacy of being on stage and people have been kind enough to say that it feels like I’m just singing to them.

Do you feel like an adopted Irish man?

I would see it as a huge honour to be thought of as that. I’ve a disproportionate amount of songs that connect me with Ireland and Irish culture. A number of Irish artists have recorded my songs.

You’ll be playing in Ennis, and you also wrote From Clare to Here . What was the inspiration behind that song?

It’s a lovely story. I was working on a building site in 1962 earning about 12 pounds a week and there was an Irish gang on the site. It was a tricky job, the soil was heavy clay. I was only 18 at the time and one of the lads was clearly not an adult, he was about 15 or 16. His name was Michael and we teamed up. He was a strong lad, but he was very shy. I paused to roll a cigarette and I said to him, “It must be very hard for you Michael, living over here in London.” He stopped and said: “It’s a long way from Clare to here.” That phrase stuck in my head and years went by and I started to think about migrant labour. I had never been to Clare when I wrote the song, but I knew it was facing the Atlantic. The white horses image came to me as did the sound of traditional music, which by that time I was quite familiar with.

Did you ever see him again?

What happened to Michael I will never know. I hope he’s alive and well.

You’ve been married for over 50 years, what’s your secret to a long and happy marriage?

Compromise and tolerance when dealing with demons, and because we’re opposites it has worked very well. People can be so similar, they can almost be like siblings. Opposites attract and there needs to be give and take. We’ve made it this far, so it’s pretty good going. We’ve four wonderful kids and 11 grandchildren. My wife is not in the best of health now.

For you, what’s the biggest difference between being a father and a grandfather?

It’s great being a Grandpa. They don’t need me anymore, but we had lots of fun over the years. I used to read stories with imaginary characters and they all believed we had a dragon that used to live at the top of the garden. I had a pretty idyllic childhood, but also poverty stricken. My childhood was rich with imagination and I try to protect the innocence of the little ones for as long as possible. I want to be remembered as a good Dad and grandfather more than anything else.

From There to Here will tour Ireland from the 26th of October to the 11th of November 2023, offering a rare opportunity to see Ralph perform these songs in 13 cities and towns across Ireland. Tickets are on sale at ralphmctell.co.uk/home/tour/

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