I used to play the oboe. I spent my entire playing career believing that I wasn’t very good only to get Grade 8 distinction when all the people I believed were far better than me just scraped a pass. A nice shock and a good lesson.

After I finished my exam I played only a few times and then I lost interest. I hadn’t been driven by the exam, but finishing school and a wide world waiting for me to explore was too delicious to stay at home and practice.

Ten years on and I have just picked it up again for the first time. More than a little rusty, but managing a decent sound and at about Grade 4 in sight reading tests, I was having fun..

..Until I started worrying about disturbing the neighbours. And it was then that I realised: ‘madame’ the downstairs hatefully unfriendly neighbour was being disturbed. A little chuckle and I carried on puffing away merrily on double octave scales over and over and over and over again.

The only thing worse than listening to her scream and yell abuse at anybody who has rung her bell over the past 18 months, has to be repetitive scales that are nearly right!

Being in The Hood, I have my finger on a delayed pulse of the hip and happening Egyptian music scene. So, despite buying the year’s hottest CD a few months ago, today was the first time I listened to it all the way through.

Far be it for me to comment on the musical genius that is Amr Diab and his bulging bank account, but he is a giant unparalleled in Western music. An album release by this guy is followed less than a week later by his songs being played in all taxis (that are not playing the Quran) and the entire Middle East knowing the words to the entire album by the end of the same week. Not that the lyrics are particularly complex, but still…

Just in case we were in any doubt as to the arteest’s patrons, the latest album cover has two corporate logos on the front: Pepsi and Rotana (a Saudi owned record label that has six music channels on which it airs its artists - Simon Cowell is nothing compared to Prince Al Waleed bin Talal).

So that you too can keep up to date with the bangin’ Egyptian music scene, I’ve popped in a little video of the first track on his latest album. Before you watch it though, an interesting point: check out him following Natalie Martinez at the beginning. This is exactly what teenage boys frequently do to girls walking down the street here. It seems to be more fun when she’s blonde and they think she doesn’t understand what they are saying. It has a tendency to bring out an anti stalking rage in me unparalleled to most other things!

Did you notice the product placement at the beginning? Oh, yes, he may be the King of Cheese, but never let it be said that he’s an impoverished arteest.

After all, looking 20 when you are in fact 46 doesn’t come cheap, not even in Egypt.