They shoot, he scores! The composer who set a legendary Arsenal match to music

I started having piano lessons aged six in 1966. The year the England men’s football team won the World Cup. It’s a fanciful notion, but maybe these two significant events in my life were for ever entwined. My family were not football fans, so I tended to flit from one team to another. I was promiscuous with my loyalty. Usually, whoever was top of the league that season. So ironically, I liked Liverpool for a while. Never Tottenham, I’m proud to say. I hated practising the piano, yet by the age of nine my music obsession took hold. I used to improvise around the little piano pieces I had to learn and that’s of my mates were better than me. So music took over. Well, at least composers, unlike footballers, don’t have to retire at 35. In fact, I thought then that being old was a positive advantage.