" I suppose you could say I lived a good country life growing up," says Allin Grey, the man who recently took over the reins at the Irish Association of Youth Orchestras.

One would expect that any person in Grey's position would have had a life-long obsession with music, starting from a very young age, but as the Castlelyons native explained to the Cork Independent, the realisation that music was his calling in life only occurred later on.

But Grey's life has been full of contradictions, from his early "country life", to the years he spent with the Metropolitan Police in London, and from his initial forays into music through his love of noisy punk to his eventual appointment at the IAYO.

Allin grew up in Castlelyons Co Cork before going off to Carmelite College, a boarding school in Castlemartyr. It was during his years at Carmelite that the teenage Grey first connected with music. "There wasn't a lot to do there, so I spent a lot of time reading. I was never really into the sports, although I would participate.

"Up to that point I really hadn't been fulfilled by any music. That changed when I heard the Boomtown Rat's 'Looking After Number One'. I just connected with that kind of noisy punk. From there I got into early U2 and some mild heavy metal. When I went to see U2 live that's when I decided to get my own guitar. I think I was 15 at the time."

Allin subsequently got into folk, specifically the British folk revival while maintaining his interest in blues and rock but while his love for music was growing, so too was his desire to escape Ireland. A move to London was imminent. "I was finding Ireland clawing at the time. My parents had separated but it was still news six years later, so I decided to head off. I had a brother living in London so I travelled over there and ended up working a succession of odd jobs until I became a civilian with the Metropolitan Police."

Allin continued to play music although, by his own admission he was still some way from reaching the level required to attain his current position. "I started gigging over in London, busking at lot on the underground. I was young, in my early 20s and I remember it being a good time. There was a community of buskers at the time and you got to know people, even if admittedly not everyone down there was all that nice. It could be quite competitive and there was some rivalries for space."

Having spent seven years in London, Allin decided he had had enough and made the decision to return to Ireland in 1994. His time spent in London would prove to be decisive in terms of his musical ambitions as he explained. "I knew that I wanted to do something in music. I had had my fill of London at that stage. I met a lot of Irish people over there who had spent 40 years there and hated the place, and I didn't want to be like that. So I returned to Ireland to get a degree in music."