Loftus-based Vin will be taking to the stage on Friday 24 October where he will be supported by local folk group Coblers Monday.

Organiser Dave Hesleton said: “I regard it as a bit of a scoop getting Vin at the Rifle Club.

“He’s a very big name in the folk world. At first it looked as though we couldn't get him due to his tour dates and then his agent offered this date and here we are.

“I think what makes Vin particularly exceptional is the fact that he is not only a brilliant musician, singer and song writter but he is very funny person.”

Vin Garbutt was born in South Bank, Middlesbrough where he discovered folk music while still at school.

At the age of 21, he threw caution to the wind and became a professional musician.

Armed with the rich repertoire of songs he had amassed, he spent the first summer busking his way around the bars of Spain’s Mediterranean coast, and on to Morocco via Gibraltar.

It was then that he found he had a talent for songwriting.

In 1972 he recorded his first album The Valley Of Tees which firmly established him as a singer and songwriter and throughout the 70s his reputation grew rapidly until he became one of the most sought after performers on the folk scene.

His songwriting covers topics ranging from, exploitation of foreign workers, unemployment, oppression, abortion, abuse of agrochemicals, sexual exploitation, deforestation, cosmetic surgery, the genocide of Timorese people, road building, the North/South divide, foetal experimentation, industrial pollution and emigration.

It's therefore no surprise he’s ruffled a few feathers in his time.

The 90s saw a bigger explosion of interest in Vin and his work when Trevor Burton of The Move fame saw him perform and handed a tape to Alan Whetton of Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

He went to see him perform and became an instant Garbutt ‘nut’, demanding to produce his next two albums – When The Tide Turns and The Bypass Syndrome.