"I've never eaten grits, cropped a share, or ridden a boxcar"

Hugh Laurie knows how easy it would be to mock a Cambridge-educated doctor's son, now the highest paid American television actor, for recording an album of blues music.

So he's got in first with a statement saying: "I was not born in Alabama in the 1890s. I've never eaten grits, cropped a share, or ridden a boxcar. I am a white, middle-class Englishman, openly trespassing on the music and myth of the American south. If that weren't bad enough, I'm also an actor: one of those pampered ninnies who can't find his way through an airport without a babysitter."

Laurie is a clever comedian and knows how to deflect criticism. When he talked about his family's previous musical sessions - sons on drums and sax, daughter on clarinet and himself on guitar and vocals - he joked: 'Nauseating, isn't it?'

- Martin Chilton, Telegraph, 23 March 2011