My friend Andrew Knight, who has died aged 66 of renal failure, was a musician, singer and entrepreneur. He excelled in playing Irish music, and accompanied his plaintive singing on the English concertina. He played with his brothers, Christopher and Patrick, especially with Patrick, an expert on the wooden flute, with whom he also ran a computer firm on Tyneside. When they sold the business in the mid-1990s they moved to the Isle of Man, where they played in sessions around the island.
Although he spent most of his life in the north, Andrew delivered his acerbic wit with a strong southern accent. He was born and brought up in Banstead, Surrey, son of Betty (nee Blunn), a housewife, and John Knight, a Crown agent and keen collector of folksong. Andrew attended Reigate grammar school, then went to Newcastle University to study chemical engineering. He learned to play the guitar and managed to fail all his second-year exams. Undaunted, he left university, bought a secondhand concertina – you could pick them up pretty cheaply in junk shops at the time – and soon managed to become very proficient.
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