I was never a professional musician; the only times I've ever played in public were in the school band and in the Air Force during the war when I used to take my ukelele down to the pub - that's the same old ukelele, a genuine “George Formby Uke”, that Brian still plays now when he uses a ukelele on stage with Queen. It's full of beer stains inside from the war days, but Brian still insists that it's got the best sound he's ever heard from a ukelele, although he also uses a little Japanese one which he was presented with there when they were touring Japan. It was on that ukelele that he learned to play and sing his first songs, old George Formby music hall numbers like Cleaning Windows, Leaning on the Lamp-Post, and Chinese Laundry Blues - I taught them all to him. Then he started developing techniques of his own which were remarkably like George Formby's… he also used to play the mouth organ and when he joined the school choir, he used to practise like mad for that.