When I was a kid, my parents gave me piano lessons and guitar lessons for a while, but I was never very good at it. I have big, sort of awkward hands. It's hard to keep going when you don't get any better.
When I was a kid, I wanted desperately to be a jazz musician. I would practice the trumpet for hours, but when I got braces, that messed up my ability to play, so all of a sudden I had all this free time.
Growing up, for me, it was in a musical family, so my mum and her brothers and sisters always sang. Every time I tried to join their group when I was little, they were like, 'Ah, darling, you're not too good - just sit back and watch us.'
My dad, bless him, was a musician. And his dad had thought that his music was rubbish.
First of all, I swore it was two people playing. When I finally admitted to myself that was one man, I gave up the piano for a month. I figured it was hopeless to practice.
All of my music teachers gave up on me one by one because I couldn't read music.
One of the things that always disappointed me as a kid, growing up, was when you could tell the singer had a fancy for something different and turned the band into something else.
When I was at school, I wanted to play a piano, and they said, 'No, that's for the classical students.' There's always been this air around pianos, which can very often discourage a young person from having a go.
