What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money?
“When I was about 15 or 16 I did my work experience at Peach Guitars, when it was in Braintree [Essex]. In those days it was a small independent shop, before it became the huge thing that it is now. For the whole week I was just trying as many guitars as I could. My granddad had passed away many years before and had left me some money and, because I was doing my work experience, John Priest, who owns Peach Guitars, gave me a really good deal on a nice secondhand Custom Shop Strat.
“I’d been playing for a few years at that point and I was really into music. I think