Pop producer Steve Levine

There’s a cliché that the classic environment of the British engineer is a shed. Down the bottom of the garden, surrounded by all your tools, in your own space and with as many cups of tea as you can handle - what more could anyone want?

There is an element of shed about many of the workplaces where you’ll find engineers, but it was with some surprise that I found myself sitting on a camping chair in a shed at the bottom of a garden in West London, mug of tea in hand, talking to a Grammy-winning record producer about electric cars.

Steve Levine is a prominent figure in the recording industry, probably best known for producing Culture Club’s early albums. Starting out as a tape operator in the mid-1970s, he trained as a recording engineer and has worked with artists ranging from the Beach Boys to Mötörhead. His encyclopaedic knowledge of the history and practice of his art is regularly on display on his Radio 2 programme, The Record Producers, and a conversation with him will frequently slip down cul-de-sacs where names such as George Martin and Paul McCartney are dropped. And he works from an exceedingly well-equipped shed, bristling with mixing desks, keyboards, analogue synthesisers and microphones.