Robin Richmond

You were an organ scholar, though, in a curious way.

Well, in a very yes, uh that was a bit of a a fake actually, but we had a private service in the Abbey at half past nine every morning, and as Big Ben chimed the half hour, the um door was slammed, and anybody who wasn't in Abbey uh got six of the best, unless they had a jolly good excuse, you see. And I was a bad starter even in those days. I found two fellows were marked permanently absent because they were organ students up in the organ loft. So, of course, I put my name down to become an organ student, and the next time they said, Oh, you weren't in Abbey this morning, Richmond, what's the excuse? I said, Oh, yes, I was. I'm an organ student, I'm up in the organ loft, you see.

What about the law? What happened to your law studies?

Well, they went down the drain. I I tried them about five times and I just wasn't interested. So um I decided to capitalize on my hobby, which was organ music.

You decided you're going to be a musician and you're looking for a job. What happened?

well I went to the Brixton Astoria … Asked to see the organist. He was a fellow called Al Bollington. And he said to me, What do you want? I said, I want to be an organist. He said, can you play the organ? I said, not very well. He said, good, I've got a job for you. … And you can be my assistant. … for which would be paid ten pounds a week … And he said, Well, now, as you can't play the organ very well, I will do your job for you as well as mine, for which you can pay me five pounds a week. And you'll obviously need, what shall we say, three lessons a week, a quid a time, all right. So he had eight quid a week off me before I even started, you know, but there we are.