This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of desert island discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Now, no, you're organist at Liverpool Cathedral. Are you a Liverpool Padleon by birth?

Yes, I was born and bred in Liverpool.

From a musical family?

Well, my father was an amateur church organist and he used to take me along on Saturday afternoons when he was practicing for the Sunday services.

Now he used to pump the organ. There's a very special concession. He used to lamb me five minutes on the organ at the end and he used to pump for me years.

And you had the ambition that this is what you wanted to do.

Yes, I think so. From a very early age my father used to take me to the cathedral and we used to sit in the congregation.

I thought, well, even at the age of seven or eight, how nice it would be to sing in the cathedral choir and how nice it would be one day to play the organ there.

Were you a chorister in the cathedral?

Yes, indeed I was from 1942 for Sunday night four years.

Where did you study the organ?

First of all, in Liverpool with a local organist, Dr. Jarvis, and then the Royal Managed College of Music.

Yes, to which you had a scholarship.

Yes. What was your first appointment?

At the early age of 14, I think, for something like six months, when I left the cathedral choir, I was appointed to a local parish church where I filled in for something like six months.

Yes, and after that?

Then I became a sort of unpaid, acting assistant of the cathedral and then when I was 19, officially I was appointed a assistant organist.

And then later on organist?

Yes, so much further later on.

Only when I was 25, I think I was one of the youngest organists at the time, one of the youngest cathedral organists.

But you still continued to study, you took a travelling scholarship?

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