Why spiky Kennedy dances to his own tune

Even fans of the gifted violinist Nigel Kennedy (pictured) have questioned whether the image he presents to the world - that of a football-loving, lager-drinking, mockney-speaking yob - is not just a little contrived, especially as he attended the fee-paying Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey and not some sink comprehensive in Walthamstow.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, the musician offered an explanation for this need to reinvent himself, claiming that it was down to pressures placed upon him at Menuhin's school. He says that he was not like the other pupils, who tended to come from comfortable middle-class backgrounds; his father was a musician, but had left his mother and so Kennedy had been brought up by a single parent and money had been scarce (Menuhin actually paid his fees from his own pocket).

Says Kennedy: "Once I started asserting my own identity, I couldn't see why I was being pushed in that particular direction. Because there was no benefit in it for me. Maybe it would have been good for my mum if I'd come out talking with a perfect accent, because it wouldn't have embarrassed her in front of her friends, or her clients. But none of the musicians I respected talked in some Old-Etonian, silver-spoon sort of way."

He adds: "For a long time, I resented my mum for sending me there. But, in retrospect, life must have been very difficult for her, too. You know, being a single parent, not having much money, and all that. But I wasn't really considerate enough to think of her at the time, because I was too into my own problems."