Don Perretta meets Foster Pilkington, Scarborough's inimitable lone minstrel.

Foster Pilkington is a pretty unusual guy. It's not just the name, although that's odd enough (his full real name is too much of a mouthful to contemplate: Stephen Peter Francis Foster-Pilkington, or Steve to his mates). For a start, he doesn't even look the part. In various A&R offices people automatically assumed that the young man dressed in the creased suit and bank-clerk hair cut was the artist's manager and were taken aback when this same person whipped out violin and backing tape to bellow his latest compositions at them. This direct approach finally paid off as Rocking Horse/Arista were stunned into offering him a deal. And there's more, much more.

As a performer he is quite unique. Until recently (he's now put a band together) he was a member of the Billy Bragg lone minstrel set, his gigs executed with the aid of tape machine, violin and guitar. When he first appears on stage, the initial audience reaction is 'you've got to be kidding', but then as the set unfurls, he charms your socks off with a collection of intense, heart-felt pop songs, sounding like a cross between the Buzzcocks and Joe Jackson with string arrangements thrown in. You leave with a smile on your face.

Although Foster Pilkington comes from Scarborough, a town not known for its pop tradition, he's the product of a very musical family.

'Me dad and me nana played the piano, me brother is a music teacher and most of my family have all played instruments of some nature or another. I remember I'd just started playing the violin when my mum bought me Tchaikovsky's violin concerto for my eighth birthday, so classical music was the first thing I got into properly. I got more and more into it as my repertoire increased.'

His early love for classical music made him something of an outcast at school where he created his own little world, which to a certain extent he still inhabits and has made him the slightly nervous, introspective person he is today. Indirectly, it even introduced him to punk music.

'When I went to public school people found it quite funny that I wasn't into pop music and preferred classical. They thought it was clever to like bands like Pink Floyd, Yes and Genesis which I couldn't stand. But because it was a public school, it was a confined environment so I got exposed to some more rocky stuff and then bang! 1976, happened, I started listening to John Peel and got into Punk. People used to ask me who I liked and I'd say the Pistols and the Adverts, but I think I liked them mainly because virtually everyone else was into those rock dinosaurs.'

It's an unlikely progression to go from classical to punk with nothing in between.

'I liked punk because these other people hated and despised it and I thought "ha ha ha I've got them now." They used to say things like "the only reason that you don't like bands like Genesis and Yes is because you're not intelligent enough to understand it Stephen" and I'd say "well, why aren't you intelligent enough to understand Sibelius' second then?". So they'd ask me "how come you like punk and that at the same time?", I said "because I can see similarities actually". Knowing Beethoven's life story and people like that, I could see parallels, because a lot of composers were natural anarchists.'

He caught the punk DIY bug and saved up for a guitar. He then teamed up with a lad who was selling ice cream with him on the beach when they discovered that they were both into punk and new wave.

'There weren't many of us around in a place like Scarborough. We plodded along, made a demo, changed from a sub-Wire outfit to an out and out new wave pop group and then split up in 1981.'

After that he began writing songs by himself, got a publishing deal and spent the advance on home recording equipment. His songs became complex to the point where he would have to have an eleven-strong band to play them. That's when he started to play on his own with backing tapes, by this time around the Essex gig circuit. Eventually he teamed up with Mick, his manager, and the assault on the record companies began. He certainly had a different way of approaching the dreaded A&R men.

'Well I didn't want to just sit on the sofa, I said "this will portray my personality and my songs in the best possible way", and then if they didn't like it then they weren't the company for me. Rocking Horse immediately loved it. This was summertime last year, and that was that.'

At the time he was selling advertising space for the Chelmsford Advertiser, so he chucked the job and started busking full time around Essex, with a regular circuit from Southend to Colchester to Harlow. He played around three hours a day and made about thirty quid. Quite a comfortable living.

'Yeah, it was brilliant. I'd occasionally get moved on but I'd usually get my three hours in.'

It's a sideline that's been very useful to him. Even now, with a recording contract and two singles behind him, he does one-man promotional tours, busking long enough to pay for a hotel for the night and then moving on. But that hasn't been enough to sell his records, with his two singles, 'The Town Of Forgotten Talent' and 'Listening Land' undeservedly disappearing without a trace. Steve thinks it's a conspiracy.

'Radio One refused to play my records. Then I heard the other day that the Radio One roadshow was going to Scarborough and that they were looking for people from the town with some talent to go on the show, so I got up really early and went up there, only to be knocked back when I arrived. They just weren't interested.'

Despite the setbacks, Foster Pilkington has had his moments already, and sales across Europe are encouraging.

'My first single started selling in places like Italy, Switzerland and Scandinavia, and a friend of mine who couldn't buy the single in Scarborough went to Germany and bought it in a record shop in Munich. I'd much rather be big in Europe than in America, I don't really want to go there, I've heard that in California all the road signs have bullet holes in them. Yes, I've decided now that I want to be bloody ginormous.'

So you have been given due warning. If you have trouble remembering the name, just think of a pint of Fosters lager in a Pilkington glass, it's a name that once learnt is never forgotten. I'm not sure just how massive he's going to be, but rather him than Chris De Burgh. And if you come across him busking, make sure you put something in his hat. He deserves it.