Long, long ago, my friend Phil and I decided to make our fortunes in the music business. Lacking the ability to sing or to play an instrument, we determined to be managers. We envisaged ourselves as a pair of Svengalis, with a stable of artists who would conquer the charts, allowing us to retire to Bransonian tropical islands before our thirtieth birthdays.

How could things possibly go wrong?, we thought, considering the first bands on our roster. There was Snakewizard, a generic heavy metal band of no great originality – but then, originality is the last thing the punters want in a heavy metal group. We would help them along with song lyrics, but otherwise leave them to practise their deafening din and grow their hair.

The important thing was to have a broad range of artists, covering different markets. Snakewizard took care of the heavy metal fans, and our second group – The Toofles – appealed to a wholly different audience. The Toofles were essentially a novelty band for pre-teens, not unlike The Wombles. Their songs had no artistic merit whatsoever but, we thought, would be wildly popular with the tinies.

The fatal flaw in our scheme, and the reason that the Bransonian islands remained forever out of reach, was that neither Snakewizard nor The Toofles ever existed outside our pulsating greedy brains. They were only ever figments of our imagination … where they remain lodged, now grown old and grey, and without a back catalogue – or indeed any catalogue at all – to fall back on.

They are still two of my favourite groups.