I must have been about six or seven, and didn’t have a singing voice, when a teacher at primary school stuck a recorder in my mouth. I learnt how to read music and loved it, and I still bring out my recorder from time to time. Then at aged eight or nine the school invited in a violin teacher – he went behind his screen and played the violin and would ask you things like which note was higher, and I passed that test so took up the violin and played until I was 16. My father would often make me bring my violin out to play for his friends, and I was in the school orchestra, but I never got beyond second violins. I was obviously never going to be concert level, and was being asked to step up the practise too much, but I wanted to focus on my O levels, so unfortunately I abandoned it at 16.

But I love the violin and to this day it is still my favourite instrument to listen to in an orchestra. I’m always mesmerised by violinists, and my good friend is Nigel Kennedy – I went to see him play about a week or so ago at Ronnie Scott’s. It’s been a privilege to see such a great violinist up close – the violin is an extension of him, you don’t know where his neck and his chin end and where the violin takes over! I love his album of his own compositions called My World – it’s really, really lovely.

I had also taken up the piano at 11 but had said to my lovely piano teacher that I didn’t want to do grades, which in retrospect I now see was a big mistake. But I loved the piano and played until 18 – I was the kind of resident pianist at school among the pupils, so for example in the Christmas pantos I’d be the one playing. I would say that it was one of the greatest pleasures in my life, but when I went to university my parents sold the piano because it was taking up space. Until my late twenties I could still play reasonably well if I found a piano, and then when I started having children – I had four children in my thirties – I gave piano lessons to all of them. But I cannot play anymore. About eight or nine years ago I decided to take it up again, and I got a teacher, but I could hardly read music anymore and I couldn’t play two hands, and the teacher was taking me back to the basics – I was pulling out all my old music sheets and insisting ‘no, no you can’t take me back there!’ You know sometimes you read these things in magazines asking ‘what do you treasure most that you lost?’, and it might be a mother’s wedding ring or whatever, but for me it’s the ability to play the piano – it’s my biggest regret that I didn’t maintain it. I always think it will be my retirement project, to take up the piano again.

My love of opera started about 35 years ago and it was a case of love at first sight. I went to the Royal Opera House to see Rigoletto and when it finished I wanted it to start all over again. I honestly think that people often help you to engage with music, and for me the person who facilitated my love of opera was the Italian baritone Leo Nucci, who was performing Rigoletto that evening – I fell in love with him and I fell in love with the opera, and it’s still my favourite. But soon after that I began to have children, which unfortunately really curtailed my ability to go to any live music, so I took to listening to operas on CDs. I listened to a lot of opera when I was pregnant with my first child (I couldn’t listen to it when I was expecting the others because I always had an infant to look after, and so I’d be playing jolly little kids tunes in the car for them!) and he’s the only one of the four who loves it; I always wonder whether it’s because he listened to it incessantly in utero! I later became a board member of Royal Ballet and Opera, and I also made a TV series for the BBC called Take me to the Opera, which has allowed me to indulge my passion and meet lots of my heroes and heroines. My son was with me when I met Leo Nucci for the first time backstage in Italy, and he said ‘I’ve never seen you have such a groupie moment!’

The Record I Couldn't Live Without

Verdi Rigoletto

Nucci, Pavarotti, Anderson / Chailly (Decca)

‘If you told me that I can’t listen to this again, my life would be much depleted! Verdi is just a musical genius’