TAKING a risk is what life's all about, according to a jazz musician who turned professional in his 60s and made his home in the Yorkshire dales after an impulse property purchase.

Mr Roger Myerscough doesn't believe in becoming too cosy. At an age when many look forward to pipe and slippers - 65 - he is gearing up for a three-month, 41-date tour which takes him as far afield as Canada, Denmark, Germany and the Isle of Bute off the Scottish coast.

Mr Myerscough, who lives at Langthwaite, in Arkengarthdale, is a lifelong jazz fan and played semi-professionally for many years.

Just over four years ago, he was offered a full-time job with the internationally-acclaimed Phil Mason's New Orleans All-Stars, and jumped at the chance.

"I was playing with the Yorkshire Post jazz band in Holland and Phil Mason's band was playing at the same festival," he said. "The trad jazz world is a bit like the Mafia - everyone knows everyone else in it - and I heard a whisper that Phil was looking for a clarinet player."

Mr Myerscough, who also plays the baritone saxophone, got the job and began a whirlwind career which takes him away from his dales home for most of the year.

The last 12 months have seen him play at festivals, concerts and clubs in 13 countries, including South Africa, the US and Finland.

He returned from a four-week tour of Australia four weeks ago and the D&S Times managed to catch up with him at Langthwaite only because gall bladder surgery had imposed a two-week rest.

"I was in the Merchant Navy from leaving school, then I worked as a commercial traveller, so travelling has never been any hassle at all," he said.

"I consider myself to be one of the most fortunate people in the world, to take whatever talent I might have round the world and play to people who appear to appreciate it.

"If I'm at home for ten days without a gig, I'm restless and wanting to be back on the road again."

His favourite festival is Dresden, in Germany.

"It knocks me sideways, it's incredible," he says. "Half a million people come into town for it. I was concerned that a British band might not go down very well in Dresden because we bombed it flat during the Second World War, but we had a fantastic reception.

"We played in a theatre so huge you couldn't see the 'gods' from the stage. What an experience!"

Mr Myerscough's wife, Ann, accompanies him on some of his tours, but is independent and happy enough to enjoy the surroundings of Arkengarthdale at other times.

Her husband does, however, relish the once-a-year gig at the Buck inn in Reeth - just three miles down the road from their cottage.

Originally from Liverpool, he fell in love with the Yorkshire dales the first time he visited.

"I came over Tan Hill way as a sales rep many years ago and was absolutely besotted," he said.

His wife, too, shared his love of the area and the couple bought their cottage completely on impulse ten years ago, moving there permanently six years later.

"We were living at Monk Fryston, near Leeds, and Ann had seen a small ad for the cottage, with no picture, in the paper," said Mr Myerscough.

"We came up, saw the cottage one evening and literally bought it the next day, completely impulsively, with the idea that it would be a bolt-hole from our hectic routine."

At the time, the couple ran an upholstery business at Monk Fryston and then at Wetherby, which they sold when Mr Myerscough became a full-time musician.

They have extended the cottage to include a music room, which will house a piano as well as Mr Myerscough's clarinet and - his first love - his saxophone.

"I'd bet this is the only dales cottage with an over-sized picture of a baritone sax at the top of the stairs," he said. "I love the instrument. I don't even have to play it; just looking at it turns me on."

He insists the complicated-looking instrument is "the easiest in the world" to play.

"I played a recorder at school, which is the most awful, miserable-sounding piece of plastic ever," he says. "The baritone sax looks totally impossible but it is the same exactly as a recorder, based on six open holes."

His other passion is motorbikes and he has two Triumph machines.

"I went to the TT races on the Isle of Man every year for 25 years but I don't have the time to go now."

He also enjoys reading, supporting Liverpool football club and walking - something the couple plan to do in the dales in early January.

"I get a two-week break every January and this year we are going to stay at home in Arkengarthdale and discover where we live," he said.

Visitors to the cottage include the couple's daughters, Jane, who is in the final year of an osteopathy degree, and Tracy, who lives in London with her three-year-old daughter, Ella - not named after jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, insists Mr Myerscough.

The youngster is already displaying signs of having inherited her grandfather's talent.

"She loves dancing and banging away on the piano," he said.

As well as a full programme of concerts and festivals, next year also sees the Phil Mason band produce its sixth CD, which will be recorded by Lake Records at a studio in Cockermouth, Cumbria. The last disc was recorded at jazz legend Johnny Dankworth's studio in Milton Keynes.

Mr Myerscough also hopes to pass on some of his enthusiasm for music - and life in general - to others.

"I would say to people, just go to the nearest music shop and get the cheapest Chinese sax you can find for about 300 quid, take it home and just enjoy it," he said. "It doesn't matter if you never play to thousands, just play it for your own enjoyment or your wife's terror!

"There are people who go through their whole lives never taking a risk. If they're happy with that, then fine, but it's not what life's about.