I did all those things that you're supposed to do at school but actually playing around with the piano and the guitar (mostly the guitar in my teenage years) was the only thing that nobody was examining and consequently it was the thing I enjoyed most and I ended up being best at.

I was destined to be a doctor and I went down that track and did some medical training. I suppose that’s a good example of the fact that jazz in the 21st century in Europe doesn’t attract a particular form of person from a particular background. Its just music and its been absorbed into society as music. I think jazz more than many forms of music is classless and I think that I mix with an awful lot of people from different walks of life literally as many walks of life as I can think of in jazz. I think that’s possible in classical music as well but it tends to favour institutionalised education.

Jazz was my asylum, my sanctuary as a small child. I found life fairly hard work and it was one of the few things I did that I genuinely enjoyed but at the same time was creative.