HOOK, Line And Carol Singing is Welsh musician and radio and television presenter Cerys Matthews’ festive spin-off from her book Hook, Line And Singer, a sing-along guide to folk songs and their histories.

Hits from her more histrionic pop days in Nineties’ Cardiff band Catatonia were eschewed in favour of musical travels from spring through to Christmas, the latter dominating the second set.

If you enjoy spending Sunday morning in bed with Cerys on her eclectic BBC6 Music show, then last Friday’s combination of informal, off-the-cuff chat, Welsh whimsy and songs sung and played with joyous abandon would have delighted you – just as it did the full house in her first visit to a candle-lit Pocklington Arts Centre.

Cerys, in dapper frock coat, frilly white shirt, scarf and panama hat (ever so Mick Jagger), played casual acoustic guitar and mouth organ and sang with the sweetness of tone that has blossomed since Catatonia days.

Mason Neely was an amused accompanist on assorted plucked instruments and makeshift percussion, joined twice by front-row Cerys enthusiast/hand-picked audience volunteer Matt Stericker on a free-form cymbal that he used to great clattering effect in Go Tell It On The Mountain.

From Woody Guthrie numbers to Bluberry Hill to Jingle Bells, O Tannenbaum and a reading from Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas In Wales with audience participation, Cerys’s relaxed, warm and festive canter to Christmas was a Welsh winter wonderland in celebration of song.