If a week's a long time in showbusiness, then what would you call nine years? That period of time being the interval between pop's brightest hopes, the mighty Choppersquad, first going into the recording studio and then following that up with a second recording session.

Choppersquad being the band in which I am the charismatic frontman and singer. Except that we might now be called just Chopper again, we haven't decided that fully.

To have another slight detour, when the band performed its maiden gig, upstairs at a pub in Preston, we were quite delighted to see a veritable truck-load of people turn up early, just as we were sound-checking. And not people who we knew. The initial euphoria faded, however, when they left after hearing one song.

It wasn't that we were bad - although we were - but that they had seen our gig advertised and thought we were a Leeds-based band called Chopper, and had crossed the Pennines to watch us. Unfortunately for us, we weren't that particular Chopper, which precipitated a name-change to Choppersquad.

Now though, we surmised, that the other Chopper's members are probably all working in Sainsbury's and Barclays, so we could conceivably go back to the name.

Anyway, various mid-life crises had prompted us to go back into the studio again, to polish up one of our later songs and commit it to CD. Not through any desire to conquer the charts, but mainly because it's a dead good laugh.

That first weekend in the studio, we were veritable callow youths, with exuberance but not much talent. The producer, a wise and learned man by the name of John Kettle, was fair but harsh. Well, to be honest, he was mainly harsh.

When we fetched up at his studio again at the weekend, I reminded him what he said to me the last time we met: "My mum can't sing. But she can sing better than you." Not that it's been indelibly branded on my brain or anything ever since, but... well, it has.

Mr Kettle was suitably shocked at his own words. Like I said, nine years is an aeon in showbiz. And to his credit, he landed on the side of "fair" much more often than "harsh" the second time round.

Not that Choppersquad had improved much in the intervening near-decade. Back in the olden days, we were young and inexperienced, but at least we rehearsed.

In the last 16 months we've played together twice; once in a rehearsal at Wrexham and once at the bass player's gig, which the drummer couldn't make. We cut the set to three songs and got while the going was good.

And now we have an excellently-produced track. It's called Mister Fantastic, and it's just the sort of thing that could make us rich and famous were we, say, half the ages we are now. We left the recording session inspired, creative, rejuvinated. Perhaps a little younger.

Because, truly, music is the best hobby a person can have. Even if you can't do it very well - like me. That's why the punk movement of 30 years ago was so liberating; it said you don't have to be able to sing, you don't have to be able to play that guitar to classical standard. Just learn three chords, get out there, and make a noise.

So, in one form or another, the mighty Choppersquad is back. Who knows, in this brave new world of downloads and MySpace someone other than our partners and mums might end up listening to this.

We're so excited, we're going to book another studio session. For the year 2016.