I played Big Brownie in the Bournemouth scouts’ Gang Show at the Pavilion Theatre when I was 12 years old. That was the first time I had a dressing room. I must have spent a vast amount of time in dressing rooms from Greenland to New South Wales since then, countless hours and not so much as a moment’s anxiety about performing. But I’ve never dressed so carefully as I did on Thursday. I was terrified. I am quite at ease in my own comfort zone — playing loud and fast and hard — but orchestras are different. They are like stately homes, relics from a nobler age that nobody really knows what to do with. I suppose that’s why I get to have a go.
Actually, the dressing rooms at the Albert Hall, where last week I attentively polished my shoes and tucked my shirt in twice and once again to make sure, were not dissimilar to the ones at the Bournemouth Pavilion: Victorian, solid, subterranean, small, hot and as full of pipes as an engine.
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