Ronnie Scott

How well could you endure loneliness?

I think I could take it for a couple or three months, perhaps. I think after that I'd start gibbering a little.

What do you want music to do for you on your island? To recall the past, to give you great performances?

In the main, just good performances of pieces of music that I like. I mean, some of the pieces would bring back memories, but in general, they would just be good performances of good tunes.

You were one of the best tenor sax players in the country, winning all the polls. Why did you decide to open a jazz club?

Well, I'd always felt that the jazz clubs, such as they were in those days, really catered to kids who wanted to come down and dance. And I thought it would be nice if there was a place where the music was primary and there wasn't any dancing. I'd been particularly impressed on my first visit to New York by visiting 52nd Street, where there were 12 or 14 jazz clubs within two or three hundred yards of each other. The first one I went to was called The Three Deuces, and that I think really was the basis of the club we opened finally in Gerrard Street in 1959.