I've tried to pin point the moment in my life when I thought "Hang on a minute, I think I can sing and maybe other people quite enjoy listening to my screeching!"

If I reach back into the swirling mists of my memory which are obscured with endless warm sunny days, racing home-made go karts, or trolleys, as we called them, playing whichever sport was in season at the time - cricket, footy, tennis, darts or pole-vaulting.. yes pole-vaulting although that particular event usually ended with grazed elbows and bruised backsides so it was only included a couple of times!

Whatever activity I was doing, it was always accompanied by a tuneless whistle or hum, my Nan said it was called "The wind blew the pump up"! I have since noticed that both my father and my eldest son, Ross, have this particular trait.

Anyway my music teachers must have heard my odd warblings and thought either "that's a nice song" or, more likely, "I must teach that boy to sing proper tunes, I can't stand it any longer!" Because I was enlisted into choirs on more than one occasion. In 1967 at the tender age of eleven dear old Mr Woods, the music master at Bournemouth School for Boys took me and thirty-odd (and some of them were very odd) other sopranos to perform at the Winter Gardens singing Gilbert and Sullivan's "It really doesn't Matter" and "Dead of Night's High Noon". Put me off G.and S. for life....sorry Guy but it's true!

When my father's job mean't we had to move back up to North Hertfordshire, I was packed to off to Cambridge Boys Grammar. my music teacher at the grammar was a certain Mr Varley. He tried desperately to encourage several of us to join his choral society, but I'm afraid the lure of the local youth club and these strangely fascinating creatures called girls were un insurmountable obstical for poor Eric Varley. My short lived career as a singer had come to an abrubt end apart from a couple of disastrous attempts to sing New York, New York, (little did I know), during the mid eighties.

When my daughter, Dr Laura, decided she would audition for the Dearne Theatre's 1999 production of Robinson Crusoe, Dr Laura also decided that yours truly needed to audition also. Ridiculously, Dr Laura was overlooked and to make matters worse I was offered the part of King Neptune, complete with long green wig.

It was'nt until the third rehearsal that Sid Robinson, the producer, said "Right then Adrian it's time we heard your solo".

I looked around desperately, but could see no-one else called Adrian. The awful reality of it hit me; Sid expected me to stand in front of some three hundred people and sing "If I Ruled The World", he also wanted it sung in tune.....unbelievable! Somehow, once I had sung it acouple of times, I got the feeling that I might get away with it. It can't have been too bad because I was cast as the villain in Cinderella the following year and sang "Leader Of The Pack"...I was hooked!

It was during this production that I met and became friends with Paul Trow, Paul played one of the ugly sisters...he didn't spend long in make-up! I also met Colin Spittlehouse, he played Baron Hard-up. Paul managed to con both myself and Colin and Colin's brother Alan into coming over to a Barnburgh rehearsal night under the pre-text of a free singing lesson.The rest is history!

I must confess the first two years were tricky but I was fortunate enough to be sat next to Peter Atkinson, he got me through Rythym Of Life and all the others...many thanks Pierre!

I still whistle,sing and hum to myself but now I can do it in the right key and without breathing, and I don't have to make my own words up, well not too often anyway!

Warble on friends.