PROFILE JEFF WAYNE: PATCHWORK PROFESSION.

Jeff Wayne describes his career as "like a patchwork quilt" - were you to spread it out you would see patches of fascinating but unrelated artists and projects. Born in Forest Hills, New York, Wayne grew up with twin passions for music and tennis. After taking classical piano lessons from the age of five, he began songwriting and playing in local bands in Los Angeles while securing a college journalism degree. He also became a national-standard tennis player.

Jeff first moved to England when his singer/actor father Jerry played Sky Masterson in the original West End production of Guys And Dolls. Years later, Jerry, then producing for the theatre, gambled on Jeff to score his new musical Two Cities, based on Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. It ran at London's Palace Theatre between 1968-69 and changed Jeff's life forever.

One of the show's investors was a prominent advertising film director who offered Jeff his first commission - 200 guineas to compose music for the Cheese Council!

Wayne's music - a Zorba The Greek-style piece - won the soundtrack of the year at the ad industry's TV Mail Awards. He went on to compose, arrange and produce more than 2,000 advertising soundtracks working with `new' film directors such as Ridley and Tony Scott, Alan Parker and Hugh Hudson.

"One ad was for Lego. It had no lyrics, just vocal `do-do's' on my tune, but the public started enquiring about it." That was the humble beginning of what years later became Forever Autumn (with lyrics by Paul Vigrass and Gary Osborne), a dramatic centrepiece of The War Of The Worlds.

Wayne was also one of the UK's first adopters of the coming electronic music revolution which would prove critical in many of his compositions and productions.

"In 1968 I purchased a Moog 3C, the biggest Moog you could get. There weren't many in the world, and Robert Moog came over from New York to install mine. I always remember him on the floor of my studio in Covent Garden behind his incredible invention, struggling to figure out the wiring of a three-pronged UK plug!"