CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE

I was happiest when … I woke up this morning. Another gift of a day! As the Buddhists say, ‘There’s still time’. You wouldn’t know it but … early in my life I liked Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass more than Beethoven. My most embarrassing moment … inadvertently belching on-air during a radio breakfast program. You try saying ‘excuse me’ to 370,000 people. The last time I cried was … looking at the curls on my younger daughter’s head. The last book I read was … Simenon: A Biography by Pierre Assouline. Could Maigret’s (fictional French police detective created by writer Georges Simenon) creator really have been like that? Yes. My favourite films are … Les Enfants du Paradis, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Singin’ in the Rain, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 2001: A Space Odyssey. My guilty pleasure is … champagne. By the third glass all guilt disappears. Life has taught me … OMG! I’m supposed to have learned something? I’m about to … step away from the ABC in search of more guilty pleasures – work with youth orchestras, fill a couple of company board seats, write a couple of books, lead some international music tours, support Tasmania’s fabulous baroque music group Van Diemen’s Band, and (most importantly) help my seven and four-year-old daughters become ever more inspirational. My first job was … delivering mail in the headquarters of a cinema chain. My most memorable work-related moment is … going to Leonard Bernstein’s 56th birthday party and discovering that he was shorter than I am.

Christopher Lawrence will host sold out Symphony Under the Stars events at Hobart’s Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens on Saturday February 16 at 7pm and at Launceston’s City Park on Saturday February 23 at 7pm. He recently announced his retirement from weekly radio broadcasting with Classic FM after more than 40 years with the ABC.