Robin Denselow has been a music writer since the early 70s (among other things). He and I were often seen ligging around in the evenings while doing day jobs on other papers /programmes. When I was fired from TV-am in the early 80s because they weren't going to do news any more, we passed each other again like ships in the night at BBC Lime Grove. My arrival in the newsroom was greeted with shouts of "here's another ship that's left the sinking rat", referring to Roland Rat running the prog while all the journos ran off to BBC Breakfast.

Kate Adie went to a nearby school and came to ours for German A level. Yes, she could sing (as did Polly Toynbee and Anna Ford) which was about all they let us do at the National Youth Theatre. That and shift scenery.

Don't know that much about Nick Clegg's interests but one of his colleagues in the party had a strong interest in Romanian music . . . so he said at the Folk Awards a couple of years ago.