[West Ender]

I'm what you would call "musical". I play piano (very badly, I'm afraid) and I used to sing - Folk, Jazz, Blues and Operetta, and in public too. I come from a musical family, with a dad who was a semi-pro dance band drummer and a mum who was a pianist.

I love all kinds of music, from classical to Rock'n'Roll but my great love is the music of the 20s and 30s. I'm devoted to Glenn Miller and, somehow, the music "speaks to me" like no other.

Now to the point. There is one thing on TV or films that I can't bear to watch. It's the sight of a ship sinking. There used, many years ago, to be a TV series called "Victory at Sea" which was all about the role of the Royal Navy and the German Navy during WW2. Whenever they showed a clip of a ship going down prow first, with the screw up out of the water, I was consumed with absolute horror. It's a sight that really chills me.

My younger daughter has a theory about all this. She is convinced I had a previous life, that I was drowned during the war and the last thing I saw was my ship going down. Fanciful? Probably, but it might just possibly explain why as a very small child, I used to have nightmares of aeroplanes sillhouetted overhead, against a dark sky, and would wake up screaming.

Was I on a ship that was bombed? Was I a young person in the 1930s? I certainly often feel a "nostalgia" for an era I never knew in this life.

I rule nothing out.