“My career began at very short notice in 1939 when the drummer in a trio that my uncle had was called up into the army. This was at the Labour Club at Chiswick in West London. From then on, things could only get better and I progressed to bigger and better bands throughout the war years. I went on to make a good living playing the drums until 1977. With the exception of my two years National Service, spent playing in the Royal Air Force, I was fully employed in bands of all sorts for 37 years. Ballrooms, touring bands, hotels, theatres, circus, night clubs, ships, and even pubs ­wherever there was music and professional musicians were required, I played. Records, films, radio and TV followed, playing just about every kind of music. Some of the places we played in were awful; others wonderful, sometimes we were treated like royalty and in other places, we were asked to use the tradesman’s entrance.

 Probably the best times were the late Forties and early Fifties before television killed off live entertainment. Most of the time the ballrooms were packed and all the music was live and the boys in the band were the star attraction, I suppose that we were like the pop stars of today; certainly the girls in the provincial towns that we played in thought so and they often sought our company at the end of the evening!! Sometimes it was hard to drag oneself away to face the journey back to London, especially in the winter when the heater in the bus was not working.

When the rock’n’roll boom chased the conventional bands out of the ballrooms we had to find alternative work and many musicians left the profession. I was lucky and managed to survive, first by playing in hotels in Jersey for many years and then returning to London to work in radio, recording studios and nightclubs.

Toward the end of 1976 I decided to get married and it seemed to be very antisocial to continue working in what was by now a very precarious profession, also finishing work at 4 a.m. and returning home an hour or so later didn’t make me popular with a partner who rose early to go to her demanding day job. So, I went to Business School and did management studies. A year or two later, having decided to leave the music business, I found myself (by a series of coincidences) managing director of - guess what? - a musical instrument company. After another two years I found the warehouse rent and rates too high to sustain the viability of our smallish company so we relocated to Milton Keynes.

I had maintained my ‘gig’ connection in London but after the move, I was not too keen to face a round trip of 70 miles to play in town, so it looked as though my playing days were really over. Then fate, in the form of John Dankworth, took a hand in my life. John was organising a get-together for local musicians at the Stables and he phoned my company asking to speak to the M.D, as he wanted to borrow a drum set. I duly delivered the set at the appointed time, to find that there was no drummer there. John asked me to play and I became part of the local ‘scene’ that was 18 years ago and it led to me playing with many of the local bands.