Taffy Thomas is a born storyteller. He learnt most of his intriguing tales "at the knee", listening to some of Britain's best loved traditional story tellers, including Betsy Whyte, Duncan Willliamson and the legendary Ruth Tongue. With more than 20 years experience as a community entertainer, Taffy is at ease with all types of audiences - from formal performances and festivals, to childrens' workshops and after dinner speaking engagements.

His wide repertoire means a programme of stories can be collated for just about any occasion or event. Taffy trained as a Literature/Drama teacher (junior/secondary) at Dudley College of Education. He then taught for several years in Wolverhampton. He founded and directed the legendary folk theatre company "Magic Lantern", travelling Europe with illustrated folk songs and stories using shadow puppets and much more!

With the demise of Magic Lantern, Taffy founded and directed the rural community arts company, Charivari, with their popular touring unit "The Fabulous Salami Brothers", which Taffy fronted and performed in as a fire eater, until a stroke at the age of 36 sidelined him. He turned back to story telling as self-imposed speech therapy. He has a repertoire of more than 200 stories, tales and elaborate lies, collected mainly from traditional oral sources, which he is happy to tell in almost any situation.

His work as a storyteller in residence for the South Lakes District Council in 1995, plus many shorter residences, has been a unique opportunity to further add to his repertoire and experiences as a performer. He is now one of the leading story tellers in the north of England, if not Great Britain.

In the 1980s he conceived the idea of a Tale Coat. Telling stories in an old white lab coat, members of his audience were presented with fabric paints and invited to paint images from the tale on the coat. Taffy always mused on the potential of one professional visual artist being presented with this same creative challenge. Whilst Storyteller in Residence at the Gateshead Garden Festival in 1990, Taffy met Paddy Killer, simply the finest textile artist in Britain. Now the collaboration of these two artists - Taffy, the Storyteller, and Paddy, the Visual Artist - has been brought to fruition in the creation of the Tale Coat, thanks to funding to Dancetales (Taffy and Chrissy Thomas' Community Arts Company) from the Northern Arts and The Arts Council of Great Britain through the National Lottery.

The Tale Coat is a unique working piece of art. The Coat can be displayed on a tailor's dummy and then donned by the storyteller for performance, when members of the audience will be invited to treat it almost as a jukebox by pointing to an image on the coat and saying, "We'd like to hear that story". As Community artists, Dancetales' brief is to inspire and act as a catalyst, so it is appropriate that Taffy's Tale Coat has already inspired the creation of his own new story and piece of music from Cornish friend and performer Mike O'Connor.