When I first met Ritchie Smith (later to be Richard Mazda) we went to different schools and would meet up to listen to music, drink coffee and buy cigarettes (sometimes single Players No. 10). In our band, Ritchie would write lyrical guitar music, whilst the rest of us were a bit more experimental.

We worked on a variety of other projects together. Down the road from me in Nunhead lived a duo that Richard had been working with called Binary: Ron Feruglio from Autralia and Stephanie Morgan. We produced our track Story of a Broken Heart with them, and also produced their track White Line. As a session musician, I played keyboards on a number of Richard's productions, including The Sound Hole album by the Primevals (with the late lamented engineer and cricket pal John McGowan), James Brown's band The JBs with I Like It Like That and Jamie Morgan. Perhaps the most interesting project we did was through my very good friend Tim Barron: his brother John needed words and voice for their animatronic robot at McAndroid: in return, they made face masks for us.

The last time I saw Richard was in Dorset before he left for the USA: he got married (for the third time) in a church in Throop and had the reception in the church hall we used to rehearse in. He did a set and we sat with John Parrish (who used to play in the band Thieves Like Us with Tim Barron) and his wife, who went on to work with P J Harvey and the Eels. Richard now lives in Queens, NY, running an independent theatre.