Contrary to the claim in Neil Cooper's article on Ivor Cutler that Cutler's first album was Ludo with George Martin (1967), it was in fact Who Tore Your Trousers?, issued by Decca in 1961 ("An offbeat view of the world through the eyes of Ivor Cutler", The Herald, July 9).
I saw Cutler at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1963 and in December of that year I was shopping in a small department in Nigeria that sold European goods. Rifling through the LP records I was astonished to come across this album, selling for half price. I bought it for 7/6 (seven shillings and six pence) and still have it.
I met Ivor Cutler in London in the 1990s and he told of his Lithuanian parents arriving by ship at Greenock. They believed they were heading to New York and thought they had arrived when they disembarked with all the other passengers.
Ivor's birth in Glasgow was in that sense purely accidental.
He said he had attended Glasgow School of Art for a short time but bore a strong resentment towards his growing up in Scotland.
He lived in a top floor flat in Gospel Oak, London, and, to avoid the stairs, lowered a basket from his window with a rope attached to take delivery of his milk, bread and papers.
David Harding,
12A Crown Terrace,
Glasgow.
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