Andy Butcher finds out what has persuaded 60s veteran BARRY MCGUIRE to dust off some of the old favourites.

"Green Green", 'Big Rock Candy Mountain", "Bullfrogs And Butterflies", "Three Wheels On My Wagon'... there is a back catalogue of the silly and sentimental big enough to fill an evening almost without pausing for breath.

"They ar silly, dumb little songs. They have no social value whatsoever - except they are fun for kids to sing; take "Big Rock Candy Mountain": about' bulldogs with rubber teeth'... Dumb!" He laughs deep, singing a line or two from some of the favourites.

"They always were dumb songs and they still are - but you should see the kids' faces! They get bigger than life. The exuberance. I had forgotten how much fun it could be; that's why the New Christie Minstrels were such a success. It was fun. No worrying about the world. Just fun."

It all began by accident in New Zealand. He and his kiwi wife, Man, had moved there in 1864 with their two young children, Brennon and Melee; he also has two grown -- and distanced -- children from his own flower child parenthood days. Figuring his "road warrior" days of have-guitar-will-travel were over, Barry was content to build their house and "grow flowers for the rest of my life".

Then World Vision asked him to play a dozen benefit concerts. He agreed, and went out to India with the missionary organisation to see their work firsthand, where he was solidly sold on the child sponsorship idea.

"If one child needs clean water that means everybody in the village benefits, they all get it. I have always got really angry at the amount of poverty in the world. It's so big; you think that what can you do? Here's something all of us can do."

While he was away, God worked what Barry calls "some holy magic". The New Zealand education authorities heard about the planned gigs, and said to World Vision that if Barry would involve the kids and sing some of the old favourites, they would open up the schools to him.

"I would have said no, but the people from World Vision said yeah, sure. When I first heard about it I wanted to say no, still, but then I felt God say to me, 'Keep your hands in your pockets and breathe through your nose. That way you can't point the finger or speak too quickly..."

The result was a 57-date concert tour -- Kids For Kids - that involved around 10,000 youngsters trilling along on stage with Barry, and child sponsorships being taken up by the bucket load.

So fired up were they by this opportunity to help do something that Barry and Man sold up their new "retirement home, packed their belongings into a few suitcases and returned to the States to try to develop the same thing there. Currently they are ploughing their money into a new company, Families and Friends International - weekend church concert gigs help pay the domestic bills -- which aims to develop the same singalong a Barry concept for World vision and other worthy causes in the States.

Kids' choirs, heart-twanging songs, a walk down memory lane -- it all sounds a little bit, well, manipulative maybe?
"It sure is! I do my best to manipulate people's wallets," says Barry with a big smile, and a rough-and-ready genuineness that it's hard not to warm to. "I will do anything I can to pull the heart chords of a person. I pour large amounts of my own dollars into this area and I will do anything I can to tug at someone's heartstrings to jet them to do the same."

This new project -- there is talk of a record and a video - may have come about almost by accident, but it is one that Barry believes has given him the greatest sense of divine purpose ever.

"I'm not a superstar, but I am not an unknown either. God has given me this little credential of some past events, and all of a sudden because of what has opened up for me, for the first time in my life I know what I am supposed to be doing. I know the row that God has given me to hoe!

"I had been floating for years. I would go and do a show here and a show there, but I always felt that this is not really what I wanted to be doing. Through all the Christie Minstrel years I was searching for meaning. I have sung for presidents and kings, in the White House and palaces, but there was no fulfilment in any of it, you know.

"Now I have found what I was looking for. When I first became a Christian I found healing in Christ, of course, but, hey. Even that didn't bring me the fulfilment I was looking for, if you know what I mean."

Charity is changing. The hand-me-down old clothes of the second-hand shops is giving way to the designer-smart suits of the rich and famous doing their You-Name-lt Aid for the less fortunate. Is it just a fashion to care?

"I think that when people have compassion, whether they are Christians or not, that's a gift from God, whether they believe in Him or not. I know Him and He is the giver of all good things.

"If someone is raising money and relieving the suffering of mankind and he is 'not one of us', who cares? Give him a hand, Hey, why not? Because he may be able to help more people than we can get to. It doesn't take away from or threaten what we are doing."

As well as a home, Barry gave up a newfound love for the sea when he left New Zealand. He talks animatedly about having helped crew a winning yacht, and explains mat the maritime flags on his jaunty white tee-shirt spell out "Jesus Loves on the front with "Amen!" run up the back-yard arm.

In his spare time he is tinkering with thoughts of another book, a science fiction adventure to follow his first, successful venture into print.

Barry McGuire, author, came about unexpectedly and belatedly. A storyline he told to a writer friend over ten years ago has -- rejected and resubmitted annually - just been published as a co-authored Christian paperback in the States and the UK: In The Midst Of Wolves draws on his love of big bikes to tell the racy conversion story of a not un-McGuire-like Hell-to-Heaven's Angel.

In the meantime he is working on the Families and friends idea, and would even like to bring it to the UK, though he is not sure whether it would really go down well this side of the Atlantic.

"I have never in my whole performing career had the fulfilments, the satisfaction and the fun, the feeling of doing something that was truly, truly worthwhile, as I have now. And it is the difference between success and total failure in the lives of the children being sponsored.

"You know, too, I thought it was all for the kids in the Third World that we were doing it, but then I started getting hundreds of letters from the kids in the choirs, too, saying, 'Thank you, I wish you were my daddy'. I started to realise that here was a night when we could get together and create a memory that would stay with them for the rest of their lives..."

Some years back Barry sat down with another writer friend and put the whole of his sex-and-drugs testimony down on paper. Then shelved the manuscript because he didn't want to go crawling around all over the past again.

"It gets boring to rehash all the old stuff after a while, because ti is always looking back and I have so much to look forward to. I feel like my life has been a horse race, and I have been galloping these last 55 years.

"I feel like here I am just coming round the comer and I can see the finishing line - maybe 20 years ahead, maybe next week if the plane I am on goes down! All my muscles are warm and I have come into my stride, and I know where I am going."

The mane isn't as shaggy as in earlier years, that's true. But this old horse has learned a few tricks over the years, and is a good bet for a strong finish. And World Vision would sure welcome any backers.