Richard Durrant is a Brighton-born musician who now lives in Shoreham with his four young children and wife Louise. His highly successful solo guitar show, The Guitar Whisperer, is currently touring UK venues to critical acclaim.

Richard also regularly performs with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, occasionally works as a record producer and film composer and runs indie label LongMan Records with Louise.

Which pop star do you admire?

Ivor Cutler. Surely he’s the one songwriter who always looked at things with true perspective.

He also loved the harmonium, a hugely underrated instrument. Ivor Cutler always sung far better than Roy Orbison (who, to my ears, always seemed to bellow until hopelessly sharp – why doesn’t anybody else seem to notice this?). He also had a jelly pocket and a special drawer for keeping porridge in.

Do you remember the first record you bought? What was it, and where did you buy it?

I remember going to buy singles on Saturdays with my sister Ann. We went to a big shop on Western Road (might have been WH Smiths or Woolworths) and the singles cost 45p each.

Ann was three years older than me so she made the decisions about what to buy. We definitely bought Metal Guru by T Rex, that could have been the first, or maybe it was I Wanna Be Elected by Alice Cooper. We already had Ride A White Swan and Deborah by T Rex, as well as Life’s A Long Song by Jethro Tull.

I still have all of them. Don’t tell my sister ’cos she’ll come after me.

Tell us about any guilty pleasures lurking in your CD or film collections ...

Yeah, the Levellers! Only joking, boys…

Favourite film ...

I’m very fond of Some Like It Hot. The cast are so brilliant at drawing you into the story that the feeling of separation from reality becomes total. And the observations of the musicians make me laugh: there they are, a couple of innocent session players who go hungry, freeze, get groped, shot at, kissed, hired, fired and misunderstood. Now that must have been written by a musician.

Favourite book ...

One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is probably my favourite book. It’s a huge, colourful adventure with events and characters that still spring to mind unexpectedly.

I only have to see a washing line to think of Remedios the beauty – so breathtaking that men spontaneously killed themselves if they caught sight of her.

Remedios herself died one day hanging out the washing, she simply floated skywards, too beautiful to stay in this place amongst the mortals.

This particular brand of magical realism made me feel totally intrigued by Latin America, something reinforced by the music of the great Paraguayan Agustin Barrios and (strangely enough) the writing of Graham Greene.

One Hundred Years… immediately felt like a literary treat compared with the austerity of my other reading – I’m still a sucker for hard books on science and philosophy, music and theatre.

Is there a song or individual piece of music you always come back to?

Elgar’s Introduction & Allegro. I also get blown away every time I hear Strawberry Fields but it’s not even a close second. There’s something about the Elgar that is linked to every stage of my life.

At home we had a recording by Sir Adrian Bolt on three separate 78s, which was a real frustration. No matter how fast I was with the record player, the music never really got going.

Now if I hear the piece on the radio, or take the CD in the car when I’m touring, the effect is uplifting, shattering, overwhelming. It’s like having my soul fed through a mangle.

What are you reading at the moment?

As I’ve just finished Peter Brook’s The Empty Space and Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia. I thought I’d allow myself a little fiction, so I’ve just started Son Of Man by the Paraguayan Augusto Roa Bastos.

I chose the book because I’ve just finished recording my next solo album made up entirely of Paraguayan music. The pieces are by Agustin Barrios and the launch of the album is going to be held on Barrios’ birthday in the Paraguayan capitol Asuncion this May 5 as part of my short Paraguayan concert tour.

Son Of Man isn’t your everyday tourist information book, but it does it for me.

Tell me about a live music, theatre or cinema experience that sticks in your memory ...

I was taken to see [Spanish classical guitarist] Andres Segovia as a young lad. Segovia played some lovely guitar pieces but was a bit miserable. In fact, the only time he acknowledged the audience was to tell someone off for coughing. What a joy.

To this day I try to make my audiences feel wanted. Is there a musician who made you want to do what you do now?

Probably Julian Bream. Or was it Andy Partridge from XTC?