An East London Grammar School education followed by 3 years at Oxford as an organ scholar, sharing tutorials with the late Dudley Moore, provided the backcloth to my chequered career!  But subsequent years with cynical session musicians and work in heavy London night clubs and pubs gave a dramatic twist to life and led, perhaps, to my current thinking and philosophy.

Among the many writers whose work I have admired over the years, I would still pick Graham Greene for style and elegance and Kingsley Amis for his natural wit and breadth of human experience.