HE'S worked with The Beatles, the Monty Python team, had his own television series and had hit singles. You might suspect that Neil Innes is driven by ambition.
The truth is far different. My career has been totally unplanned," he says. "What I do I do for fun."
The Essex-born musician who for a while was part of the Liverpool music scene is heading off on a British tour, one which brings him to Birkenhead's Pacific Road Arts Centre on Saturday March 5.
In the show titled - with an awful pun - Innes His Own Words,, he will be performing music from his career and telling anecdotes.
It is five years since he last performed a similar show on Merseyside but this one will be a little different, he suggests. "Then there were more words than there are now. I did a tour of America at the end of last year and changed it."
It was some 30 years ago that Innes became part of the Liverpool music scene, thanks to his friendship with Liverpool poet Roger McGough.
"I joined the Grimms group which was part Scaffold and included Adrian Henri. I used to hang around a lot with Roger when he was living in Liverpool."
By that stage Innes was well established on the British music world thanks to his association with the cult comedy band The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Like everything else in his life, that came about by chance.
"I had the piano thrust on me as a child and I ended up really liking it. From the age of seven to 14 I got quite proficient but at that age things happen in your life and you start to rebel.
"I realised that every time I learned a piece they would give me a harder one. So I took up the guitar and started writing my own stuff.
