Meet Fraser Neill, the Scots folk musician behind Eurovision’s Emmelie de Forest

To be a folk music fan in Britain today is to be jangling the keys to a cultural palace. For a variety of reasons, we seem to have produced the most brilliant young musicians in decades — but the rest of the world has always seemed rather more excited about the fact than we are. We have started to export musicians, from Spain to Novia Scotia, who go on to musical achievements that are seldom recognised, let alone celebrated, back home. Of the ten million Brits who tuned into the Eurovision song contest, not many would have guessed that the Danish winner was yet another young protégée of a British folk musician.

Until a few months ago Emmelié Charlotte-Victoria de Forest was as unknown to Denmark as she was to the rest of the continent. Cynical souls who watch Eurovision to indulge a sense of schadenfreude might have imagined that the 19-year-old — with her pin-up good looks and barefoot, elfin vibe — was another carefully constructed product of the pop industry. But her history is rather different. She has spent the past five years touring low-budget folk venues and performing with Fraser Neill, a Glaswegian folk musician.

I tracked down Neill to the town of Dokkedal, five hours north of Copenhagen, where he was thrilled about the success of his protégée. They make an unlikely combination: a 53-year-old Scot and a 19-year-old Dane performing a variety of material, from their own compositions to covers of Alanis Morissette. He was introduced to her at the Ajstrup folk festival by a guitar player. ‘She was 14,’ he says. ‘We only spoke for a few minutes but she phoned me up a few weeks later and asked if she could record a demo tape because I had a little desk studio at home. Then the first time she opened her mouth to sing I nearly fell over — she could really hold a note.