WHEN the credit crunch comes to the punch this year, the knock-out blow could take out any number of jobs.

Whether prescient or not, Kevern Stafford has been ahead of the game of chance, in his own words “breaking out of the daily 9.05 to 4.55 grind to open Scarborough’s leading jukebox-based bed and breakfast” last summer.

Music is a theme running through his life, as it does his newly published debut novel, JookBoxFury, the story of popular music, psychedelic alcopops and populating spreadsheets.

Kevern has an MA in popular music and has specialised in mud, from seeing Les Gray and co play Tiger Feet live in 1974, to trudging through it at many of his 17 Glastonbury festivals.

Here in York, he has cut a dash performing with the folk festival sword dancers Black Swan Rapper en route to his being a two-times world champion rapper dancer.

York has played its part in his writing his debut novel, the humorous story of a chaotic jukebox song pickers’ game show as it takes to the road to launch the psychedelic absinthe-and-greengage alcopop, Jook.

“I started doing a creative writing course at York St John University, and during that course I began writing this novel and submitted the first half as my dissertation,” says Kevern.

He was working for Norwich Union in York at the time.

“They gave me three months off to concentrate on writing… well, to do whatever I wanted,” he says.

So began the long process that led to publishing the book himself, after coming away from the Arvon Foundation’s Getting Ready For Publication course feeling “not exactly enthused”.

“The main question on the course was ‘How do I get a good agent’, not ‘How do I write a good story’,” Kevern says. “They all wanted to get into this seemingly secret world and everyone seemed to be incredibly negative.”

However, words of encouragement came from a fellow Scarborough writer, one GP Taylor. “I met him at the Scarborough Literature Festival and he gave me the advice to self-publish… despite his 11-book deal with Faber,” Kevern says.

“For me, it was always more about feeling confident in the story, and I wanted it out there, so getting it published by an established publisher wasn’t necessarily the goal. In writing and completing the book, I’d achieved what I wanted to do.”

At this point he took redundancy from Norwich Union.

“And I thought, what better way to spend some of that redundancy money than publishing my novel? It had to be better than going on holiday.”

He and his wife, Ruth, also took the opportunity to open up a Scarborough B&B, transforming The Adene Hotel into The Waves.

“The previous owners handed over one guest to us, who’d been coming for 14 years,” says Kevern. “So we practised on him for a couple of days, and then we were full for the first weekend and it’s been busy all summer, a real baptism of fire.”

Now make that bed, breakfast and books. He has 1,000 copies in boxes at home, printed by self-publishing specialists Matador, awaiting purchase via the website JookBoxFury.co.uk.

Those with a love of pop history will enjoy diving into a book that “celebrates rock and pop and its epitaph”.

“The only single my parents had was Cinderella Rockefella! So when you’re in a house where you don’t hear music, Top Of The Pops really was the shout of the new,” Kevern says.

“Sometimes you wonder if it’s because you’re older, when you think it just isn’t the same any more… but is watching Alexandra Burke singing Hallelujah on The X Factor the same as watching T Rex or the Sex Pistols on Top Of The Pops for the first time? From my point of view, I’d say ‘No’, but if I was 12 or 13? I would still say ‘No’.”

If you share those sentiments, JookBoxFury will bring a smile to your face.

•JookBoxFury is published in paperback by Matador/Troubadour at £7.99, with a sleeve photo by Sarahphotogirl, taken at Scarborough’s gaudy ice cream parlour, The Harbour Bar.