RALPH McTell has been called a folk singer all his life, but he has yet to write – or perform – what he would call a folk song. He plays the acoustic guitar and he writes lyrics that tell stories, but there the similarity ends, says Ralph, who is heading out on the road from his Cornish home this month for his most extensive tour of UK venues for many years.

The trip – which includes four Westcountry shows – comes at a time when Ralph has been attracting a flurry of attention with the release of his autobiography and a new triple CD album of spoken stories and recorded songs.

He's already appeared on the BBC's One Show, which flew him to Paris to talk about and perform his Ivor Novello Award-winning track Streets of London – it actually started life as a song about the French capital.

For a man who has been mostly ignored by the media over his long and varied career, it's been a novelty.

"I was a minor celebrity in my local pub for a few days," laughs Ralph, 63, who lives in a cottage near St Austell with his wife, Nanna.

But he doesn't crave the attention. As always it is the music that matters for him.

"I wouldn't mind one more hit if it happened by accident, but it's not what I'm doing this for," he says. "I have got an audience and I am very fortunate that they have stayed around and grown old with me.

"The bus pass is approaching but I don't feel old. Then I look in the mirror and think the image is distorted – until I see the lines and recognise they represent the march of time.

"But I know that I'm lucky because a lot of the people I idolised as a kid – Woody Guthrie, Dylan Thomas, a lot of the blues guys – had much shorter careers than me."

At home in Cornwall he plays the piano and guitar, walks the dog and works in the garden, and all the time his imagination and memory are working away in the background.

Ralph has the most extraordinary recall of early life events from the age of two upwards and there are many fascinating stories in his book As Far As I Can Tell, and the CD set of the same name, which was recorded in Cornwall.

They address only his life up until he met and married Nanna more than 40 years ago; everything beyond that time he considers private and not for sharing – but there is so much honest and intriguing detail from his early years that the book weighs in at a hefty kilo.

They were hard, but spirited times in a one-parent family, and they put our modern moans of credit crunch and banking disaster into perspective.

While the book is a great bedtime read, the 76 readings and musical recordings of the companion CDs is perfect for car journeys, interspersing spoken vignettes of sad, glad and funny moments with incidental music and new versions of some of Ralph's classic tunes.

His soothing tones are perfect for narration, honed in his days of presenting the children's TV programmes Alphabet Zoo and Tickle on the Tum. I challenge anyone to share the story of his father's departure without shedding a tear.

After the 53-date tour, where the cream of his extensive catalogue can be heard, and a trip with Nanna to South Africa to see one of their four children and their grandchildren, Ralph's next project could be closer to what he's been resisting all these years.

"I'm not going to sit back in my easy chair just yet," he confides. "I'm looking for someone to help me produce the next solo album. Then I feel like I need to do some folk songs, some really traditional songs. And maybe I'll do a folk club tour – now the last time I did that was in 1968."

Ralph McTell appears at The Wharf, Tavistock (01822) 611166) on November 5, at The Acorn, Penzance (01736 365520) on November 6 and 7 and at The Landmark, Ilfracombe (01271 32 42 42) on November 8. The book and CD set are available direct from www.ralphmctell.co.uk