What was the first concert you went to and did it have a lasting impact ? I was aged five . It was a show by Atarah at Leeds Town Hall , I had never been anywhere as big in my life because I was brought up in a small Yorkshire town called Settle . It was a kids ’ show involving classical instruments , electric guitar , bass and drums . She told stories through the music , you got to hear all these different instruments and join in as part of the audience . I remember sitting there thinking , ‘ I want to do that ,

I want to create fun music that everybody loves ’. There was a great sense of joyfulness , of being in live music , and that show certainly led me to learn lots of instruments as a kid , including cello and bass guitar . I spent most of my childhood making music .

What led you to join the Royal Albert Hall for your first stint back in 2008 ? One of my deep dark secrets is that I used to be an accountant . I always knew I wasn ’ t a good enough musician to be a pro so I did economics at Uni , and trained as an accountant . I realised that the only way to make accountancy interesting is if the company you work for does something that you care about , and so as soon as I qualified , I got myself an accountancy job at Warner Music . Then the finance director job at the Royal Albert Hall came up and I thought ‘ that ’ s my dream gig ’. I think the Royal Albert Hall is the pinnacle of live entertainment , not least become it is home to this remarkable breadth of music . Once I got there , I realised there are so many other things that are great about the Hall . It ’ s run by a charity , but it doesn ’ t get funding , so it operates very commercially

– there is this beautiful balance of purpose and commerciality . The working culture is incredible , there is a sense of fun coupled with real passion and hard work .

As CEO of Help Musicians you oversaw the distribution of £ 20m of financial hardship funding . What lasting impact did the role have on you ? It was a massive privilege to be able to work for a charity like that in such a horrific moment , in a pandemic . If I think of all the miserable times that friends and colleagues had in the pandemic , I was so lucky to have purpose , even though it was completely exhausting . At the Royal Albert Hall we had a saying , ‘ if you put the right things on the stage , everything else works ’. What Help Musicians did in the pandemic was put the right things on the stage . We had this array of work that we did pre-pandemic , and as soon as the pandemic hit , we focused on the one thing every musician needed , which was financial support .