Did a radio session with Julian Arguelles tonight. Julian and I started playing duo together in a basement when I lived in Hunsdon Rd in London (and I was a medical student)  in the early nineties. We have done three gigs since then – one at Roger Carey’s jazz club in Hastings in 1992 or 3, one at the CCA in Glasgow in 2001, and one at Henry’s in 2004. I hope there will be more. I love Julian’s saxophone playing and he is a good friend. He is also quite wee compared to my gigantic bulk. At one point Julian and his brother Steve played a gig with me and my brother Phil and we realised that one Bancroft buttock was bigger than two Arguelles buttocks…….maybe I need to stop there. It was entirely innocent honest.  We have been playing squash together recently (the game when you batter a small rubber ball around an enclosed space not the one where I lie on top of people…..)

I was late as I got held up and had to go home to get my drum kit and got caught in traffic. I have a traffic theory – if you are early the traffic is always good so you arrive way too early. if you are late the traffic is always bad so it makes you being a little bit late into being very late. Basically, if you are early you get earlier and if you are late you get later…

Anyhow I got there and the BBC people were relaxed and friendly. Stephen Duffy is a jazz singer who is the presenter. For some reason if active musicians are radio presenters they are nearly always singers. He didn’t force his singing on us though. We ended up doing an improvisation about a big plastic lightbulb that changed colour. My favourite part was doing an improvisation which I called ‘Error Coco’, named after a line in a recent TV ad set in a circus which is said with this deadpan exagerrated estuary accent. I knew my kids would be watching and it would crack them up as we had been saying Error Coco in that voice all week (see mp3 below).  So it was a code message to them. And when I got home they had been in stitches so I was happy.

Here Error Coco spoken:

Hear Error Coco on Jazz House: