Naturally, I was a bit of a curiosity, being the first hydrogen peroxide ingestion patient they had ever seen.

I had been playing since I was 2 years old, never remembering a life without music, always playing everything naturally and mostly by ear, and all the grownups wanted were more scales and drudgery out of me.

However, the thought hit me that this was a pretty pathetic way to kick the bucket - being accidentally poisoned during a photo shoot, of all things - and I started weeping at the idiocy of it all.

The first city I ever came to in the states was Des Moines. I was 12 and was in a boys' choir.

And apparently things like a Vindaloo curry are out for the rest of my life, or at least a long time.

Normally, the same strange impulse which brings a crowd to an accident is present in the reaction to a concert in which something goes wrong.