If you didn’t know Olly Alcock was an artist, musician and avid cricket fan you’d guess it within seconds.

His flat in central Carlisle is crowded with his paintings on all sides, and at the foot of the stairs stands a collection of cricket bats, all signed by players. As we talk he’s got half an eye on the cricket score.

Immediately you enter you’re greeted by the Rolling Stones in their early days – hanging from a wall next to the front door. Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and David Bowie in two of his guises greet you in the main room.

A guitar is propped against one stack of pictures. There are also landscapes and paintings of old steam engines. After a while you notice that Jimi Hendrix has been staring at you.

So does Olly put “artist” or “musician” on official forms? “I put ‘artist-musician’,” he says. “But I prefer what Spike Milligan put: ‘Trainee corpse.’”

Olly seems a long way from being a corpse yet. He’ll only admit to being “over 29” – which he points out means he’s outlived those musicians such as Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse who died at 27. He’s as lively and talkative as a young man.

Retirement seems far off – although of late the music has been taking a back seat. A professional band needs to pay for roadies, equipment and transport, which was all becoming too expensive. “It’s horrible to admit it, but it was down to finance,” he says.

“But it’s quite nice to have a weekend where I don’t have to be a certain place.”

However you can catch Olly for one night only, on Saturday, September 14. He’s teaming up with former bandmates Ben Eggleston and Mike Thorburn to provide music for the Sticky Wicket beer festival at Penrith Cricket Club. Tickets are on sale now.

Olly was born in Huddersfield and given the name John Stephen Bailey Alcock, explaining: “My dad thought ‘JSB Alcock’ would look good on the score card when I came to open the batting for Yorkshire.”

The family moved to Cumbria when Olly was four and his father became headteacher at Calthwaite School. “He took a pay cut to come here,” he recalls. “He was deputy head of a big school in Huddersfield but he wanted to bring us up in a rural environment rather than an industrial town. I’m so glad he did.”

He still follows Yorkshire cricket club but says: “I haven’t been back in Huddersfield for a long time, and I wouldn’t recognise it now.”

Music and art were passions from early on. “There’s never been a time when they weren’t there.

“My first paid gig was in 1967 at Blencowe village hall with a group we called the Burgundy Blues Band. We were influenced by Eric Clapton, John Mayall, early Stones.”

But music won out over art, and led him to quit Carlisle College of Art three quarters of the way through his course to head for London.

“We played the Marquee Club 28 times. Others were Mott the Hoople, Rory Gallagher, a group called Patto.”

Their star guitarist Ollie Halsall was left-handed, like Olly Alcock. “So are Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, David Gower – all the best people.”

Olly’s band used to rehearse in the same pub in Islington as the Humblebums, the folk band featuring Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty.

He adds: “I was 200 yards away when Jimi Hendrix died. I was in a club called Koko and late in the evening a rumour went round that he had died, just nearby.”

Sex and drugs are often grouped with rock ’n’ roll and he recalls: “A lot of people were into dope but I never was.

“I definitely like the odd pint, but I didn’t fancy dope.”

He spent seven years in London but it was the era when punk was beginning to emerge, leaving little room and few record deals for blues bands like his. So they returned to Carlisle and he discovered: “The quality of life up here was so much better. Even in the 70s the rents in London were ridiculous.”

He formed a covers band called The Deltas. “We did the acceptable face of rock ’n’ roll – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks. When the climate improved we went back to our own stuff.”

The Olly Alcock band is its most recent name, though Olly says the name was their promoter’s idea and not his. “I wasn’t even in the room at the time!”

Yet he was their songwriter and vocalist as well as guitarist and has written hundreds over the years.

Where do ideas for songs come from? “I don’t get up and say: ‘I think I’ll write a song today.’ You get something in your head and try to expand it.”

There’s humour in some of them – such as the song about a hangover, in which he turns the blues cliché on its head and opens with the line: “I didn’t wake up this morning.”

Another, called Going Back to Carlisle, reflects his love for the city, with the lines: “London’s okay if you’ve got a reason to be there. But don’t try to tell me honey, I don’t care.”

The other dominant theme in his life has been art. It’s certainly a dominant theme in his flat.

Paintings of two steam engines stand on his easel. “I used to draw steam engines when I was very young.”

One major influence on his work was an inspirational teacher at art college, Jack Seabury. “He was very meticulous. So as a result I’ve never been one for slapping paint about. I paint things more or less to look like things.”

There are plenty of Cumbrian landscapes in evidence but most striking are the portraits, not just of musicians but also sportsmen like Muhammad Ali, George Best and Ian Botham. “I don’t tend to paint people I don’t like.”

With popular festivals running out of money and closing, Olly’s not optimistic about the current prospects for music locally. Another of his jobs is teaching the guitar, but he says: “Where these kids are going to play I don’t know. There’s a shortage of proper gigs for proper bands.”

And he has nothing but contempt for the mass-produced instant success from TV talent shows. “People like Simon Cowell have ruined it. There are people out there who think his show is about music.”

For all but a few, making a living from music or art is always going to be precarious, but it was all Olly really wanted to do. He has a girlfriend but no wife or children – perhaps remaining child-free rather than childless – and reflects: “I’m probably too selfish. I’m fond of being my own boss.”

And he has no regrets at all. “It’s nice having a rest. But I wouldn’t have missed any of it.”

n Sticky Wicket is at Penrith Cricket Club in Wetheriggs Lane on Saturday, September 14, from 1pm to 11.30pm. Tickets are available from www.eventbrite.co.uk