As we will be spending time together I feel that it is important for you to know my background so I have included a synopsis of the highlights of my life (but the anecdotes are exclusively reserved for my travelling companions).
I was born into a musical family in 1949. My parents were both musicians and members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. I grew up with the young Beatles and met my wife Pam at the Cavern Club, not realising that in 1972 I would meet Sir Paul McCartney again to record the Wings album Band on the Run with George Martin and Paul's wife Linda.
I played violin and piano from a very early age but graduated towards drums and percussion as my real love. At the age of 16 I studied at the Royal College of Music and a year later became the youngest principal percussionist in the world with the Scottish National Orchestra.
After 18 months in Scotland I was invited to join the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and by 1972 was being pursued by Andre Previn to accept the principal chair in the London Symphony Orchestra, where I had the honour to meet Stravinsky, and perform with Bernstein, Karajan, Levine, Mehta, Solti and the now famous John Williams, to mention but a few. During my time in the LSO I played with the world's greatest conductors, soloists and composers. Concertos were written for me, and I took Master Classes around the world. I became Commercial Director and was instrumental in the Shell/LSO Young Musicians Competition that has produced many of today's star players.
My parallel career in commercial music involved performing and producing over 100 albums, singles and soundtracks, receiving gold discs and awards culminating in co-writing the world-wide hit single Family Man for Daryl Hall and John Oates. My discography includes Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, The Who, Barbra Streisand, Frank Zappa, and many, many more.
In my capacity as performer/director I helped negotiate many famous series of film recordings, and was at the embryonic stages of Steven Speilberg's Star Wars trilogy, Superman, Indiana Jones, Aliens, and others. I toured extensively with the LSO and performed in every major concert hall, in every major city in the world.
It was while travelling the world that I became more and more aware that my homeland had more history and heritage than most of the other places I was seeing and I wanted to share the Britain I was discovering with my family of whom I was seeing very little. This prompted me to make a major change in my life in order to explore my new interest and turn it into a beneficial life-style and occupation, which was just as fulfilling and equally challenging.
This became a reality in 1989 when I formed an allegiance with the St James's Club which was a private members only hotel owned by Peter De Savary where the list of members was unrivalled by any hotel, even to this day. Since the sale of the 'Club' in 1993 I have had the privilege of driving some of the most prominent members of the entertainment industry, world of corporate finance, and wonderfully entertaining couples on their first vacation to the UK. The service I offer is a 'personal driver guide' specialising in all that Britain has to offer, from bespoke heritage tours to one special day in London.
