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ss7220

At some very early stage, I began to play around on the piano. Around 5 or 6. Mother was still alive. Peter encouraged me to a certain extent. And uh shortly after mother had died, when I had reached the age in 1912. I used to play the piano. I did have piano lessons of the more serious sort. The thing I used to enjoy playing on the piano was a kind of ragtime. And my brother George used to particular to enjoy this. He would want me to play the wedding glide. The wedding glide? It was written by Eddie Hurst. Oh here, da da da da da da....et cetera. George, having done that, George would want me to get up, he'd be Jim Kirby and I'd be Jimmy Kellogg. We'd do the thing. Nobody else in the room, just me and George doing this. Saying all this, this is all encouraging me to my piano instinct. He's very good. Which to Michael was nothing, to George was nothing, to Peter was nothing. Jim had one tune, he played it absolutely superbly, God knows it was, some sort of waltz. Don't you think George could play? No George couldn't play. He loved it and of course Peter absolutely worshipped the sound of twilight. He thought that was the best song he ever heard. Ha ha ha. I always had it, I don't know where it came from. No classical music? No not particularly. But nevertheless I know quite a bit about classical music and love it. But on this very subject, you can take this in any way you like, at some stage, when Michael and I had just moved in with Barrie in the Adelphi. He gives us this terrific large wind up gramophone, about so high. He gives up 10 bob each to go buy some records. So Michael goes off in one direction, aged--- I think he had just gone off to Oxford, so we'll call him 19 and we'll call me 16. And then we meet, and he says what have you bought? And I said The Whispering by Paul Whiteman. And he said Rimsky Korsakov, Sheherezade. You bloody fool he said. You're going to be through yours in half a minute. And I've still got it. And I still think there's nothing better. And I thought Sheherezade was tripe! You never know. But it's a funny little...He didn't live long enough for me to get a laugh out of it. Michael was very clever, always going to be a highbrow. You were never going to be a highbrow. Yes but he was also highbrow inclined. Do you happen to know whether Michael liked any other music? No, but he did in fact, he didn't dislike music at all. He'd be quite happy with these other things for a short time.