YOU suspect that Ronnie Browne is not much given to introspection. In the pages of his autobiography, That Guy Fae The Corries, we discover a humble fellow who considers a singing career just “ a job” and who regards himself as “one of the luckiest men in the world”. Considering that Browne could legitimately claim to be one of the most significant voices in 20th century Scottish folk music, he is an extremely modest man. What matters most to him is close family, loyal friends and the domestic stability of a rock solid marriage to his beloved Pat that lasted more than 50 years until her death in 2012.

Browne’s focus is very emphatically on the world far from public life. There may be a fleeting mention of Barbara Dickson, an encounter with Hercules the bear or a brief anecdote about good pal Roger Whittaker but this is not a typical showbusiness memoir. This is a life he chooses to measure in property purchases, extensive home improvements and the tireless work of trusty handyman Bill. There is so much detail about kitchen conversions, conservatory constructions, house moves and swimming pool maintenance that you begin to suspect that this could be a book of greater interest to regular viewers of property programmes than the many devoted fans of The Corries.

Browne mostly uses his late wife’s diaries and The Corries’ business diaries to jog his memory as he diligently works his way through a life that began in Edinburgh in 1937. He is typical of a generation raised during the war years and proud of a childhood that contained none of the luxuries a modern youth would take for granted. A good scrub was only possible by filling a zinc bath and bad behaviour was punished with a skelp across the arse. Browne’s first public performance comes aged eight during a fundraising venture for the Newington Scout Troup. Clad in a pink and purple T-shirt and silk pantaloons, sporting a false moustache and serenading a fellow Scout in a blonde wig, he gamely sang Josef Locke’s Hear My Song, Violetta.

Gifted at sports, talented at drawing and clearly able to hold a tune under the most testing circumstances, Browne heads to college and a possible career in teaching. He becomes aware of his future Corries compatriot Roy WIlliamson at Edinburgh College Of Art where Williamson had his own skiffle band. Browne goes out of his way to note that they came from very different ends of the social scale. “I was working class and he was from a moneyed, professional background,” he writes. Throughout the book, Browne conveys a sense of the professional respect that bound them together over the years but you suspect they also led very different and very distant lives away from their joint professional commitments. By 1961, it was decided that the two of them might dare to dream of becoming another Robin Hall and Jimmie MacGregor. Given that Browne could neither read nor write music, Williamson clearly emerges as the creative force in the duo. Browne generously admits that he is now merely “the guardian” of Williamson’s song Flower Of Scotland since the latter’s death in 1990.

The fact that Browne relies on The Corries’ business dealings for his memories slants this auobiography in a very particular fashion. Simply listing the cities visited in their annual concert tours, a succession of television appearances, recording dates and business ventures doesn’t make for the most enthralling reading. Success is very much counted in pounds, shillings and pennies as The Corries rise from earning a salary of £4,287 3s 10d each in 1969 to £9,497 8s 6d in 1971. It is a story told in ticket sales and bank balances rather than one overly bound by musical passion. You are left yearning for Roy Williamson’s side of The Corries’ story.

Browne takes justifiable pride in his other career as a portrait painter and artist, noting that he banked £37,000 from the sale of prints of his depiction of Scotland’s Grand Slam Victory in 1990. But Browne is more guided by discretion than confession in writing about his life. He seems a decent, good-hearted man who has given generously of his time and talent to a long list of charitable causes. Unfortunately, all the good will in world towards Ronnie Browne cannot prevent the conclusion that this is a rather dull, disappointing memoir.