A GRANDFATHER from Swanmore has recorded and released his first-ever single for free at the age of 79.

Former business man Ted Quincey wrote and recorded the song Robin on a Starch Pack on a whim with zero songwriting experience, saying that the idea simply came to him one night.

Ted explained: “I occasionally wake up in the middle of the night, obviously, I am a widower, and did the usual thing; got up, made a cup of tea, had a digestive biscuit, it’s 3.30am so I think I’ll have a look at the iPad, and I start thinking of a song. And I go into notes and wrote a couple of lines, and then I’ve written a verse, and I think ‘Well that’s not awful, how am I writing this?’ and it just continued.

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“And I can’t give you a sensible explanation, and I pretty much wrote the thing out.”

After not knowing what to do with the song for a few weeks, Ted eventually decided to record it and release it, alongside an accompanying music video.

Alongside releasing the song for free on YouTube, the grandfather of five also set up a fundraising page so listeners who enjoyed Robin on a Starch Pack could donate some money to charity. Ted decided on the cancer charity Prevent Breast Cancer as he had lost both his wife and one of his daughters to the disease.

Ted said: “Once I’d written this song I thought ‘Now what on Earth do I do with this? Is it any good?’, I didn’t do anything for a couple of weeks, and then it gradually occurred to me that it could be used to raise money for charity and then it became very clear firstly, it must be for a cancer charity, and secondly, it must research into genes, which is obviously an issue for us – there must be some sort of gene in our family which causes this problem.

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“And that seemed to be a perfect fit; a friend of mine said ‘Here is a charity, Prevent Breast Cancer’. I checked on them, they do gene research and that locked to be the one.”

Ted is hoping to raise £1,000 for Prevent Breast Cancer, and, at time of writing, has managed to collect £850 since the page was launched on February 14, a total that he said he was “enormously pleased” with.

To find out more about Ted’s fundraiser or to donate, visit justgiving.com/fundraising/edwin-quincey.

The music video can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYdUx_TDzSo&feature=youtu.be.