Let me give you a tip: if you have a child who shows an interest in playing the piano, think very carefully before you send him or her to piano lessons, because that's exactly what happened to me at the age of six and by the age of nine I hated it so much I couldn't wait to stop. I did stop after a couple of years and might never have played again if I hadn't fallen ill at the same time as my dad so we became housebound together. Back then, there was no daytime TV; besides the radio, the only source of entertainment we had in the house was the piano. Dad fancied himself as a bit of a singer - he used to enter the odd talent competition at the local working mans' club - and could knock out a tune on the piano, albeit in a very basic manner but well enough to teach me how to play the tune Blue Moon, using the chords C Major, A Minor, F Major and G Major (he used those same chords, in that order, for every tune). Suddenly I was hooked! I played around with the chords and soon discovered D minor as an alternative to F Major, and every new chord I found thereafter gave me a huge thrill (and still does, although i'd like to think that perhaps there ain't many left). Then a miracle happened: a Hammond organ shop opened up in the local high street. I still remember it like it was yesterday, peering through misty windows at these huge, wondrous things, dying to have a go but never imagining for a moment it might happen. But dad had other ideas and a few days later he'd arranged for me to do exactly that. From then on, I was in there at every opportunity: lunch times; after school; all day Saturday, and within a few weeks I was playing better than the shop manager and attracting crowds who would gather in the doorway and spill out onto the street to watch and listen to this little kid who could barely reach the foot pedals, playing epic themes like the Dam Busters and 633 Squadron.

I had caught the bug.

The high street of Chester-le-Street, County Durham might seem like an unlikely place to find a shop selling expensive organs made in Chicago, USA, but working-men's clubs were springing up all over the North East of the England at the the time, and they were all desperate to have these amazing new instruments in their concert rooms, and Chester-le-Street just happened to be the best place to distribute them from. For me, it was a classic case of being in the right place at the right time. I fell in love with Hammond organs: I loved their sound, their feel, their smell, and when I played my first (brand new) B3 through a Leslie speaker, the manager had to prise me off when it was time to close the shop. Soon, he was selling organs so quickly there weren't enough people around capable of playing them, and he asked my dad if I could join the pool of players he was sending out to the working mens' clubs. That weekend, at the tender age of twelve, I played my first professional gig and was soon making more money per week than dad.

I had found my vocation.

My very proud, wonderful father passed away when I was sixteen. By then I was the resident organist at Houghton-le-Spring WMC and owned a Ford Anglia that I couldn't drive (legally) until my seventeenth birthday, which began another love affair: cars, particularly racing cars, but that's another story.

I continued playing WMCs and nightclubs throughout my teens then spent a year playing in a band on a cruise ship that sailed out of Miami on one-week cruises around the Caribbean. Unlike cruise ship musicians today, we lived like passengers and enjoyed the full run of the ship and its facilities. Tuesday was our night off in Kingston, Jamaica, and I'd often go out clubbing and stay with friends then fly over to Montego Bay the next day to rejoin the ship. It was a memorable year.

Once back in the UK, I decided I needed to break out of the club scene and become involved with bands who played original music, so I started flirting with various bands including one who's lead singer was Brian Johnson - who later joined ACDC - and a duo called Splinter who were signed to George Harrison's legendary Dark Horse label. I struck up a rapport with George, which continued some years later when I was with Eric Clapton's band. In the late 70's I played briefly with Lindisfarne on a tour of the major UK festivals, and was in Gallagher and Lyle's band for a while, and recorded their last album with them, and this led to me being head-hunted by Dire Straits which I joined as their first keyboard player.

People occasionally point out to me that when I joined the band it transformed into the huge, stadium-filling phenomena people now remember it as, and ask how much of a part I played in this transformation, so I'll try to answer that. Before then, Mark's songs, amazing though they were, were written and performed within a very tight format and played only on guitars, and he knew if the band was going to go the distance, he had to introduce another dynamic. That's when I became involved. I suppose the answer is that I brought something to the band that helped give it greater mass appeal. I'll let your ears decide.

I added so many keyboard parts on the Love Over Gold record, we had to bring in another keyboard player to play them live, so Tommy Mandel was recruited as a second keyboard player, and he was later replaced by Guy Fletcher. One of the songs we recorded during the Love Over Gold sessions was Private Dancer, which didn't make the album because it sounded strange being sung by a bloke, but I later recorded it (along with John Illsley, Hal lindes, Pick Withers and Jeff Beck) with Tina Turner for her Private Dancer album. She then asked me to be her musical director on her forthcoming US tour supporting Lionel Ritchie, which I did and which was a gas because during the tour her album went to number one. The celebration party in a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio, Texas, is one I won't forget.

Working and recording with other artists and bands in between my commitments with Dire Straits meant I didn't have much free time to do other things, including somehing I had become obsessed with - windsurfing - and I turned down several offers to tour with other artists, including Tina, although I continued for a while as her MD on a consultancy basis, and spent a month in LA auditioning and rehearsing her new band. But when Eric Clapton rang me up and asked me to join him I took about three seconds to say "yes", and so began a most enjoyable few years, which ended when I rejoined Dire Straits to make and co-produce the On Every Street record.

Since then I've been recording and occasionally touring with a variety of people, and making music for films, TV and commercials, and very recently I've put together a band called The Straits. Here's how it came about:

Chris White, Dire Straits' sax player, called me up and asked if I'd be interested in playing a gig with some guys in Italy who were in a Dire Straits' cover band. As you can imagine, I wasn't at all keen but once he explained that John Illsley, Dire Straits' bass player was doing it to promote his album, so iit would also be a bit of a reunion, I agreed and a few weeks later we were playing to circa 1000 people on top of a ski mountain in the Italian Dolomites.

Some weeks later, Chris, Phil Palmer, Jack Sonni and I played another gig in a village outside of Rome, and about three thousand people turned up. Of course, the Italian promoters, as Italian promoter tend to do, completely took the piss when it came to advertising the band correctly, and a lot of people turned up expecting to see Dire Straits - Mark and all - and I apologise once again for that. But what I found interesting was that when they realised it wasn't Dire Straits, they didn't leave or protest; they all stayed and really enjoyed themselves and gave us the kind of reception Dire Straits might have received. So, when I was asked to put together a band for a charity show at the Albert Hall, I formed The Straits, and the show was such a massive success we decided to keep the band together. And what a band it is! Someone who shall remain nameless, who was massively connected to Dire Straits, likens The Straits to Dire Straits in their heyday - the Brothers in Arms era. I agree, and I'm not alone in thinking that occasionally we're even better.

Here's some of the artists and bands I've recorded with:

bob dylan, dire straits, eric clapton, prefab sprout, tina turner, bee gees,
gerry rafferty, the blessing, escape club, david knopfler, gallagher and lyle, mary hopkins,
shakin stevens, matt monroe, mark knopfler, rory block, westernhagen, della miles, mick hucknall, sky,
joan armatrading, lindesfarne, geordie, brian johnson, jimmy nail, robert cray, al green, jamie catto, cheshire.