He is open about how classical music saved him from suicide aged 28 when he decided to retrain as a pianist (he’d had just four years schooling in piano from ages 14 to 18). “Music is the only thing that has never let me down,” he says. Outspoken about the lifelong effect of abuse he suffered at primary school, about leaving university to go to drugs rehab, and about his time later in a psychiatric ward – the inspiration for the moving Channel 4 series Notes from the Inside last year – he still struggles with depression. “It’s a daily reprieve. I don’t think it would take much to throw me off balance… but we’re all quite fragile however we try to mask it.