Andrew started playing Trumpet when he went to secondary school at the age of 11, taught by peripatetic brass teacher Mr Blake who played in the Hanwell Band. When his brother had started learning 2 years earlier his parents bought him a nice new shiny brass B&M Champion Trumpet. They refused to buy Andrew one on the grounds that he would “not stick with it”, so he joined his local brass band and came home with a frosted silver Regent Cornet. Captain Ray Munn coached the new recruits and Andrew gradually edged along the back row. 7 years later he had saved enough money to buy his own new shiny silver round stamp 928 Sovereign and he sat on the front row closest to the conductor. Andrew’s brass banding days were interrupted by college, marriage, a 20 year jazz sabbatical playing Trumpet (a 1967 Olds Super, not the Champion) in the “Kingy Big Band”, a stint on Saxophone, then orchestral French Horn before eventually arriving at TSB on BBb Bass at the start of 2024. Although mostly ‘self-taught’ during lock down, Andrew is grateful to all the other local brass bands who aided his circuitous tuba route to Towcester. And that old Champion? It went into hibernation not long after the Regent’s arrival reappearing nearly 4 decades later when Uncle Andrew taught his nephew to play. It had its final swan song on a well-known auction site when he upgraded to a shiny new (to him) Sovereign