For I do believe that the colour of guitar you tote tells people everything they need to know about you as a person. Well, maybe not everything – that unfortunate childhood incident with the tadpoles was just boyish high-jinks, nothing more – but certainly, a fair amount about the cut of your guitar-playing jib.

But I’ve narrowed it down to three. If ever I have the pleasure of having my own signature weapon of choice (strats, seeing as you ask – and don’t try to deny you haven’t all had THIS little fantasy…) built by a large and well-known manufacturer, I would like to think the guitar would come in these finishes – sonic blue, walnut and natural.

Controversial? Where’s the black? The olympic white? The candy apple red?

They don’t do it for me, and as with many character-shaping incidents, tadpoles notwithstanding, it can be traced back to my childhood.

I don’t even know who the guitar player was, but it was Top Of The Pops, it was 1973-ish…and some geezer is throwing shapes with a guitar the colour of the bluest skies. ‘One day’, thinks the small boy, ‘she will be mine…’

And now she is. But not before I acquired my FIRST strat…which was what the manufacturers referred to as ‘mocha brown’. Not many people speak of this finish in loving, nostalgic terms but to ME…it was a strat. And it was mine. And this was way before they were outsourced to any OTHER country, oh, no…this one came from the good, ol’ US of A. For a boy from a small Scottish farming town, that might as well have been Mars. Bear in mind I didn’t know the biggest, nearest city to me – Dundee – was only sixteen miles away…until I was about fourteen years of age. And as an adult, I discovered the joys of staining. Stop sniggering at the back – smutty boys are lonely boys. No, staining in the ‘varnish a guitar the loveliest shade of dark walnut’ sense. What other kinds of staining are there, after all? And so she, too, is now mine.

Which brings me to the natural finish…and I’d just like to name-check a school friend called Mike Mcinally, who lent me Deep Purple’s MADE IN EUROPE album, on the cover of which is a photo of one Richard Blackmore, patently about to commit murderous musical acts upon a BEEEEAAAUUUUUTTTIFUL strat in the colour of…er….natural. I was hooked – on Purple, on Blackmore, on natural strats. And as it happens, I don’t…actually….HAVE a natural strat currently…sorry, I’m broke – it’ll have to wait.

So there you have it – if you play a sonic blue, walnut or natural strat, you are patently a very cool player with a fine line in Eric Johnson-esque licks and a witty line for the adoring ladies.

If, however, you play one of those Clapton CRASH-finish strats…there is no hope for you WHATSOEVER.

I mean, you probably even play a strat with a BIG HEADSTOCK…