I was born in 1948 in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, and am very proud of my roots. My dad was a butcher for the Co-op and my mum worked in a factory.
I had a brother, five years younger than me, but tragically, he and his wife were killed in a road accident in 1975, something we never really got over.
My school record is best described as undistinguished. I left school with five bottom-grade O-Levels and a budgerigar.
I had devoted the rest of my time to music and sport, and was classically trained on the piano accordion, which I learnt to play because I thought it was different. One day at school, the teacher asked if anyone could play a musical instrument. Most of the other kids were claiming the piano or the violin and the more usual type of instruments. Being a born braggart and ‘expander of the truth’, I put my hand up, and the first thing that came into my head was the piano accordion because I knew no one else in the school played it.
‘How unusual,’ said the teacher. ‘You can play in the school concert at Christmas!’
Here I learned my first lesson – if you’re going to lie, make sure you have an escape route!
The next eight months were spent having piano accordion lessons, paid for out of my parents’ meagre earnings. I found it was easier to make up my own tunes than to read music, and not only that, they sounded a lot flashier. Consequently, I appeared at the school concert playing a selection of what I'd described as ‘Ethnic Inca’ music. To cover my mistakes I announced that I would put in a couple of deliberate mistakes for the audience to try to spot. The sound of applause, albeit slight, captured my enthusiasm, and I became smitten with the show-business bug.
Over the years I progressed to quite a high standard, and won a number of championships. My then mentor and teacher, the great Horace Crossland, taught me how to conduct, and I took charge of the junior band, having a great time in the process. I was also in charge of the comedy section of the show, used to vary the input of music, and hence my love of comedy was born.
I was determined to become a professional musician, but sadly in the sixties the accordion lost its popularity and gave way to the electric guitar. I have often said that if I had played the guitar to the same standard, I might well have achieved my wish of becoming a professional musician.
I played both solo and with the band for a number of years after leaving school, reaching the great heights of an unemployed ‘wannabe’ professional musician.
Perhaps not surprisingly, my parents felt that I should get a job. I saw my show- business career fade in to the distant background as I filled in application forms. It was then that fate lent a hand, or rather ‘stuck the boot in’.
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