The Troubadour coffee house in Earls Court has an illustrious history, with past performers including Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Jimi Hendrix but Stephen Fretwell really ought to have progressed beyond its tiny confines by now.

The kind of basement venue where you're at the front even when you're at the back, where the air dryers in the toilets can drown out the singing was the cramped setting for part of a brief UK tour promoting the Manchester-based singer-songwriter's single, Now.

"I feel like I should give really deep interpretations of the songs because it's such a low ceiling," he said, enjoying the opportunity to banter with audience members who were so close he was almost sitting in a few laps.

But he should no longer be able to see the whites of his fans' eyes after two fine albums of rough-edged balladry. The second, last September's Man on the Roof, may have suffered from being by an unshaven, unglamorous bloke in a year when feisty females were so much in demand.

Highlights aired here, including Scar, Coney and the fraught Darlin' Don't, sounded deserving of a much bigger audience than the one in front of him.