When I was eight and learning the clarinet at school, my musical idol was Acker Bilk. Then one of my dad's friends played me some MJQ and Dave Brubeck had a hit with Take Five.

When I went to big school I played in the Jazz Club with the big boys and Steve White played me Ornette Coleman and Mr Wynne -Wilson brought Monk tunes.

I bought John Coltrane's Africa/Brass on my thirteenth birthday and tried to play along. A couple of weeks later at a rehearsal with the mainstream band I was playing in with even bigger boys, I played a solo and thought I was getting some where. Afterwards the bandleader came to me and said "Don't you ever do that again". They stopped asking me after that. I thought "There's more to this stuff than I thought".

When I met Keith Tippett he said "You sound just like Stan Getz" -then I discovered Junior Walker -I still love Junior Walker.

I once played a complete West End show on the stage at the Celebrity Club in Bond Street with a paper bag over my head -and the depressing thing was no-one said a thing- maybe they didn't notice.

The first time I saw Peter Brotzmann was in the Plough in Stockwell in the early seventies and I was (almost literally) blown away-I'd never heard a saxophone so powerful and so LOUD. Next time I saw him I played with Tony Oxley at Bracknell Jazz Festival before him and he said I had a good sound and I was blown away again.

I met Captain Beefheart once - he said "The CIA made Acid to fuck people up".

I've got a piece of manuscript written in scrawled pencil by Gil Evans-a part written for me to play on his arrangement of a tune I wrote for the film Absolute Beginners -its crap film but that bit of paper is one of my most treasured possessions.

The other one is a stage pass which says Nelson Mandela 90th Birthday Concert -Larry Stabbins -The Specials.