Jeremy Cresswell - photos by Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Music is in his blood. Growing up in the town Slough, made "infamous" by the series The Office, Jeremy Cresswell, the British High Commissioner to Jamaica, got his love of music from his mother.

A classical choral singer since he was young, Cresswell says opera soothes his soul. Mainstream music would soon make its way into his heart, the pop explosion in Britain during the 1960s helping him to make that transition.

The High Commissioner also has a deep respect for politics, that he got from his father, a businessman, who paid keen attention to world issues.

In Jamaica for three years, he has been soaking up the culture and vibe of the island with his partner, Dr Barbara Munske.

The father of two children from a previous relationship, Cresswell studied at Oxford University. One of his more memorable experiences in Jamaica so far was working as an analyst for Cricket World Cup last year on a local television station.

You were singing before you went to university, did you go to school for that?

I went to a choir school at the age of seven and did professional singing in the church and the chapel.

It's an extremely strong discipline. It teaches you to be self-reliant, work in a team and it also encourages self-confidence as you have to perform on a regular basis.

Where did the interest come from though?

I learnt music at my mother's apron strings and it was not pop music. It was the more serious classical type and I'm sure, in many ways, that made me a rather boring youngster, because the music that I liked was not the music most of my friends liked. I found, a bit later at school, that I had to try and bridge the gap. Music is something that covers a very wide spectrum. Everything that's musical should be embraced and we should not assume that one aspect of music is better than another.

So when you started to bridge the gap what were some of the things you were listening to? Who were some of your favourite artistes?

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the big pop explosion in Britain which incidentally, also coincided with the beginning of reggae. Bob Marley's great success would come a few years later. But I certainly remember My Boy Lollipop, by Millie Small, which was coinciding with a time when The Beatles started their massive career in the 1960s.

You made mention of sports being an interest. What kind of sports, and did you play?

I always played a lot. I think that's again an English school tradition and so in the winter we played football, rugby and hockey and in the summer we played cricket. Later on in life, I learnt to play tennis, I still play tennis here. But football and cricket were probably the two mainstays. I've found one of the great things about living in Jamaica is that there is quite a number of people who know a lot about cricket.

I've also had the fantastic privilege of meeting some very good cricketers while I've been here. Sir Garfield Sobers, together with Brian Lara, and more locally in Jamaica, to meet people like Courtney Walsh and Jeffrey Dujon. People you've admired over the years on television or seen on the cricket ground, you get to meet in person. So, it's a little bit of hero worship.

Tour of DUTY with SACHA WALTERS

This month marks 60 years since SS Empire Windrush took numerous Caribbean immigrants to Britain. Is your embassy planning any special events to celebrate this?

We haven't immediately got any plans but that fits in very much with the Diaspora Conference (which happened last week). We have a delegation of about 150 members of the diaspora coming from the United Kingdom and I look forward to meeting them, and maybe that's something that will come up.

I think that a combination of the growing significance of the relationship between Jamaica and the diaspora and the UK, the United States, Canada and elsewhere, combined also with the bicentenary last year of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, have made people focus more on our joint history.

A joint history, which has lots of difficult elements to it, but within living memory, is a history which has really developed from a time, not just when the Empire Windrush took many Jamaicans to the UK, but I would say just a few years before when many young Jamaicans volunteered to fight in the armed forces in the second World War.

In a sense, the wave of migration to the UK in the 1940s and 1950s brought on the relationship which had developed during the wartime. Since then, the relationship, has developed through independence and the growing relationship between two independent sovereign states.

These are things that bring us together, through people who have one foot in Jamaica, (and) one foot in the UK, through families.

What's been the best thing about Jamaica for you?

Jamaica has been a very big learning process for Barbara and me. We've never lived in the Caribbean before. My last four postings abroad were European postings. The opportunity arose to come to Jamaica as a new challenge. Obviously, you read about a place before you come, but living the reality is the way to learn. And I think it's been a very enriching experience.

Jamaica is a small country with a disproportionately large image and we've been struck from the start by the friendliness and the openness of Jamaicans.

Any new projects that the high commission is working on?

Over the time I've been here I've been struck by (the) good working relationship that we have with the Jamaican government and other institutions here. And, I think, one area I would like to stress is improving government and improving our mutual security. It's something that, for many Jamaicans, is very important, so when we can share experience we can help each other. So when we're looking at areas like reform of the police where we each have our own experiences, these are things we can work on together, because we have a common interest to see that our countries succeed.

A lot of the challenges in Britain and in Jamaica are quite similar; about young people, about their relationship with education about their relationship with their parents. About how in the modern globalised world jobs can be found for people as technology improves, sometimes it means that the opportunity for jobs decreases. How do we make sure that we train ourselves in such a way that we keep up with those changes so there's a common agenda.

Cresswell