I REMEMBER...Paul Brady

Paul Brady (75) is an Irish music legend whose 50year career has seen him cross paths with everyone from Bob Dylan to Tina Turner. Paul's new memoir Crazy Dreams is out now

MY EARLIEST MEMORY WAS THE SONG “NOW IS THE HOUR”, which was a big hit for Vera Lynn shortly after the war. Bing Crosby recorded that in the Fifties, and that might have been the version that I heard, because a lot of big singers at the time recorded the song. According to my father, it's the first tune they heard me la la-ing to when I was 18 months old.

MY MUM AND DAD WERE BOTH PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS. My father was trained in the Republic of Ireland's system and my mother was trained in the north. My father was a Sligo man and my mother was born in County Tyrone. When they got married, they wanted both to work, so they had to find a town on the border of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. That's why we settled in the town of Strabane. My mother taught in the north of Ireland, in a school three miles south of the town, and my father used to cycle across the bridge every morning to his school in Lyford in the Republic of Ireland. It was kind of a dual existence. You were living with two different cultures really, socially, artistically, and politically. It was a good experience to have both. I think people who live along the border do benefit from two different views of the world.

I WAS SENT TO PIANO LESSONS WHEN I WAS ABOUT FIVE OR SIX. Usually at the piano lessons, you learn how to play the scales and read a bit of simple music. But I very quickly realised that it wasn't the music I wanted to play. The music I wanted to play was what I was hearing on the radio in the house— Radio Luxembourg was the big pop station. I started to try and play the tunes I heard on the radio myself. I kind of taught myself by ear how to play the piano.