Listeners to The Music Show on Radio National sometimes ask how I can like all music. I don’t, of course, but I’m interested in it all – I always have been.

I was born in Liverpool in the UK into a working, lower-middle-class home. My dad had left school at 14, his own father having experienced unemployment interspersed with casual work on the docks. My maternal grandfather was a blacksmith, though in his later years chronically ill. Mum finished school and went to a teachers’ college, going on to teach primary school children for most of her life.

Andrew Ford. Photo © Jim Rolon

I mention this, because it was not in any way a privileged upbringing, but there was always music. Mum had recordings of popular classics – Fingal’s Cave, In the Hall of the Mountain King, the New World Symphony, and Beethoven’s Pastoral, which was a favourite; I recall hiding behind the sofa during the storm [in the Allegro]. Dad had Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald records. He was more of a fan than Mum; he could quote lyrics from Gershwin or Cole Porter songs. I liked all of my parents’ music uncritically and,...