Games People Play: Larry Adler, 84, Mouth Organist

I TOOK a lady to see Show Boat last night, which reminds me of a joke. It's about Mrs Oscar Hammerstein talking to a lady at a party, and the lady says, "Look who just came in. It's Jerome Kern who wrote `Old Man River'!" and Mrs Hammerstein said, "Jerome Kern did NOT write `Old Man River', my husband wrote `Old Man River'. What Jerome Kern wrote was `dah, dah, dah-daaah'..."

As a kid, I remember spending a day playing with some marbles in the street, but another kid came along and took my marbles. Then a big boy came up and said, "What are you crying about kid?" When I told him, he took the other boy by the feet and held him upside down until the marbles dropped out of his pocket, then he invited me to join his gang.

We used to rob department stores, and I specialised in the candy counters because they were easy to reach. Then I went on the stage when I was 14 and, when I was 19, I read in the paper that the leader of my gang had been electrocuted for murder. Well suppose I hadn't gone on the stage? I'd have been in a gang, and I might have been with him on that job, because he was my hero.

Next month I'll be back in my home town of Baltimore, where I have the distinction of being the only student ever expelled from the Peabody Conservatory of Music. The students were supposed to take part in a recital, and I'd prepared a waltz by Grieg. But when I came up on stage, the superintendent said: "And what are we going to play, my little man?" So little man went to the piano and played "Yes, We Have No Bananas".

Larry Adler plays the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1, on 12 February. His latest album `The Genius of Larry Adler' (Decca) is released on Monday