Jane Bom-Bane

The café celebrates its fifth birthday next week. Staff will perform the popular A Musical History Of 24, George Street, Brighton, at the café on September 9 and 10.

To book seats or to find out more, visit the website, www.bom-banes.co.uk.

Which film star/musician/artist/ writer do you admire?

I think the artists I admire are the ones who surprise me. Flick Colby for being an original and exciting choreographer and dancer who could invent a blinding routine for impossible deadlines.

Bill Bryson because he can make difficult concepts accessible and write in such a relaxed way. Fine art puppeteer Issy Smith because she mixes the dark with the joyful in such clever, innovative and surprising ways.

Genius composer-player Nick Pynn who can make any object sing beautifully. And roboticist, thereminist, sawist, writer and broadcaster Sarah Angliss, who is just so knowledgeable, musical and inventive, it’s not true.

Which TV programme couldn’t you live without?

I haven’t had a TV for a long time, so when I visit my mum and the telly’s on, I can’t take my eyes off it! It’s usually on a Monday night, and we watch Countdown, then later on, Coronation Street part one, turn over for University Challenge, then turn back for Corrie part two.

Not as good as it used to be, but easily good enough for me to lie on the settee and turn off my mobile phone!

Do you remember the first record you bought?

What was it, and where did you buy it?

My sister and I had a record player for Christmas in 1966, and we bought two records with our Christmas money – Mrs Applebee by David Garrick and California Girls by The Beach Boys from Jill Hanson’s Record Shop, Lower Precinct, Coventry.

Tell us about any guilty pleasures lurking in your CD or film collections…

Catch A Falling Star by Perry Como, I Believe by The Bachelors, Shaddap You Face by Joe Dolce and Conspiracy Of Hearts, a sentimental war film about nuns hiding and smuggling soldiers and children out of Italy.

Do you have a favourite film?

It’s very difficult to pick one but it’s probably Whistle Down The Wind starring Hayley Mills and Alan Bates – brilliant child actors and beautiful black and white shots of the Lancashire countryside. So innocent, heart-wrenching and funny at the same time. I watched it recently and it still had the same magical effect it had on me as when I was a child.

How about a favourite book?

John Irving’s A Prayer For Owen Meany is a rare journey of a novel, a perfect mix of tongue-in-cheek and serious that manages to create a dimension to believe in somewhere before or beyond atheism. And Money by Martin Amis – a wild, uncompromising poet of a writer.

Is there a song or individual piece of music you always come back to?

A Message To You Rudy by The Specials and originally by Dandy Livingstone. It reminds me of the days I was in a 2-tone band, and of my son, who was named after this track.

What are you reading at the moment?

A book called Quirkology by Richard Wiseman. It’s such a relief to read scientific evidence proving how superstitious and illogical we all are!

Tell us about a live music/theatre/cinema experience that sticks in your memory...

When I was 19 I spent six months working and travelling around Spain.

Just by chance I was in Seville for the Holy Week processions and celebrations. During the day, such religious fervour, but at night, in whatever square you found yourself, everyone drank sangria and Spanish-danced alone or with a partner inside a circle of people singing, clapping and strumming dramatically and beautifully. Young and old knew all the songs, claps and dances by heart.

Is there a book/record/film/play/ person that made you want to do what you do now?

Originally, it was definitely Mrs Fitzsimons, choir and madrigal teacher at school, who gave us challenging and fantastic harmonies to learn. And recently there was a recording from the 1950s on the radio which blew my mind and encapsulated the sort of thing I would love to be doing at the café in the future – the Genoese Longshoremen singing La Partenza, an Italian polyphonic folk song. I heard it as I was dropping off to sleep after a busy Saturday night in the café and I honestly thought I’d been transported upwards into heaven.

I’d never heard singing like that. I would love to get all the Bom-Bane staff past and present to sing it outside the café on a warm summer dusk.

If you get a spare 30 minutes how are you most likely to spend it?

If I can’t do the crossword, it’s too late to swim, I’m too tired to read or my son’s not answering his phone, then I do love listening to the World Service in the dark.