Bard of Ely on HubPages

Bard of Ely comes from Cardiff in Wales but in 2004 he moved to Tenerife in the Canary Islands where, under his real name of Steve Andrews, he has been writing for the Tenerife Sun and Tenerife News newspapers. In the UK he has written for Permaculture magazine and used to have a column in Big Issue magazine that helps homeless people, and it was this publication that dubbed him Bard of Ely. Ely, by the way, is a massive council housing estate in Cardiff and it had a certain humorous appeal to have such a title and to come from such a place!

Bard of Ely, besides being a writer and journalist, is a singer-songwriter and poet, as well as being author of Herbs of the Northern Shaman. His song You're a Liar, Nicky Wire, about the catering fiasco at the Manic Millennium, got banned from a record shop in Cardiff, featured on BBC R1 Session in Wales, rave reviewed in the NME singles page and released on the Crai Records label fronting the Taffia EP. Another song by Bard of Ely entitled Sound Of One was used several times on the TV soap Family Affairs on Channel 5.

Bard of Ely was the co-presenter of two series of the magazine In Full View on Choice and he has appeared on many more TV programs on the BBC, BBC2 and HTV.

In 2002 and 2003, Bard of Ely was a compere for the Avalon Stage at Glastonbury Festival and he has also played at this world famous event on several occasions. On the same years he appeared at the Green Man Festival too and felt inspired to dye his beard green and kept it afterwards.

Bard of Ely is a member of the Loyal Arthurian Warband druid order and a Bard of Caer Abiri (Avebury).

Besides all this, Bard of Ely made a name for himself growing exotic fruit and appeared on HTV Wales news for having the first homegrown pineapple in Wales. He followed this by cultivating kiwi fruit in his back garden.

Bard of Ely has been written about in some depth in books by several authors. He is in Fierce Dancing, The Last of the Hippies and Housing Benefit Hill by CJ Stone as well as Peter Finch's Real Cardiff and Lionel Fanthorpe's The World's Most Mysterious People.

My music videos for my songs can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/bardofely

Artwork for avatar pic by Paco de Colmenar at http://www.myspace.com/paco_mac

Proving that you can make money here I have recently done so and been featured by Ryan Hupfer here:

http://blog.hubpages.com/2009/04/the-payout-chronicles-bard-of-ely-explains-how-he-found-100-iin-his-adsense-account/

My site about Tenerife is here: http://www.tenerifeisland.org/