When it's party time, an idea for you from a tragic musical failure

Life has a strange way of working.

One of my greatest passions is music. I come from a musical family. I love jazz, opera, classics, R and B, Soul, Blues, even a bit of rap and rock - pretty much everything except "light" music and C & W.

I've seen everyone from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis to Otis Redding to Kiri te Kanawa and Pavarotti. But one of my personal tragedies was that since the minute I lost that boyish treble my vocal skills have been not unlike that of a corncrake in pain.

Happily, my children have made up for this. I may have mentioned Martina here before. I think she's wandering round the world with Massive Attack right now, but here's another.

The picture at the top is of a group called The Word. The moody one on the left is my son Nick. If you want a party band, they're for you- they do 60's and 70's stuff. If you'd like to hear what they're like, you'll be agreeably surprised at http://thewordpartyband.co.uk/Video.html. I certainly was.

And I was even more surprised when my youngest, who's in New Jersey, told me she's been approached by a record label there. Martina started at 15. Chantal is even younger.

I don't know. My father and two of my uncles were excellent musicans. So was my grandfather. Talent has skipped a generation.