AT the age of 65, many people would be thinking of slowing down.

But folk and jazz musician Alan Wilkinson has just added a degree in fine art to his already extensive CV.

Mr Wilkinson, of Darlington Road, Hartburn, near Stockton, originally planned to study art when he was 18, but switched to French at the last moment.

He said: "When I was 18, I thought I was God's gift to art - Michelangelo reborn. I took the entry exam at King's College, Newcastle, but they didn't offer me a place so, kind of sulking, I said 'I'll go and do French instead'. It changed the course of my whole life."

A career as a senior manager with ICI followed but, after retiring, he enrolled on a part-time course at Cleveland College of Art and Design, in 2000. He graduated this year, describing his degree as "completing a bit of unfinished business".

Mr Wilkinson also recorded a musical accompaniment to his degree exhibition.

He played piano, trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, harmonica and guitar with various jazz, brass, dance and folk bands during the sixties and seventies.

While a guitarist with the Teesside Fettlers, he wrote a song called The Hartlepool Monkey.

He said: "I am told it is still sung occasionally by the Hartlepool fans."

In 1970, he won the RM Currie Travelling Fellowship Award, which he used to write an influential survey on Motivation Theory as applied in European industry - later published in Management Today magazine.

In 1971, Pitmans published his book on Management Information Systems, which became a recommended text for the Open University.

He won the title of UK Mensa Superbrain in 1982, with an IQ of 161 measured on the Catell scale.

The average is 100.

His plans include staging art exhibitions with four fellow graduates at Kirkleatham Museum, Redcar, east Cleveland, in June, and at Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le-Hole, near Pickering.