It is the amateur singer’s worst nightmare: to fill your lungs, open your mouth, waggle your tonsils and then emit a sound that bears no relation to the little black dot that your fellow chorus members have interpreted differently. Even worse to do it forte when everyone else is taking the pianissimo.

All you can do is smile, blush and crack the joke used by Schnozzle Durante, the old American vaudeville star: “I got that note from Bing Crosby — and boy was he glad to get rid of it.”

I’ve hit a few bum notes over the past few weeks, but nothing that proved fatal to my dream of performing Gilbert and Sullivan. It started with a notice in the window of a shop in Blackheath, southeast London: “Open rehearsal for The Pirates of Penzance: no experience needed.”

I discovered that as well as staging Pirates this autumn, the local Savoyards, the Centenary Company, were putting on a summer charity concert of G&S songs to raise money for the Cutty Sark. Like Charlie Bucket happening on the lucky Wonka Bar, this was my golden ticket.

Not to fame and fortune, you understand. I have no X Factor pretensions. I know my limitations. But to sing a few G&S numbers in public — as opposed to in the shower — had been an ambition from childhood. Like opening the batting for England, I had assumed lack of ability would stop me. But as this was a charity event . . .

I had an odd upbringing. While most toddlers get taken to the park, I went to the theatre. At the age of 6, my mother thought my artistic appreciation had developed to the point where I could be exposed to the brilliance of W. S. Gilbert.

This isn’t boastful talk of precocity, but an explanation for my enthusiasm. I was taken to see Pirates in London and loved it. My grandmother, an amateur operatics diva, would write to me enclosing the lyrics to G&S songs, particularly the fast-paced numbers. Call it the patter-smatter of tiny feet.

I’m sure that only one word in ten made sense, but they sounded funny. Even now, I love the twists of Gilbert’s rhyming: “threatened with émeutes . . . heart is in yer boots” or matching “strategy” with “sat a gee”, meaning to ride a horse, in the Major-General’s song.

It was, to twist one song from Pirates, “a first-rate opportunity to sing Gilbert with impunity and indulge in the felicity of unparalled publicity”. If only I could carry a tune. For it is no false modesty to say that I can’t sing. Cats wail when I get going. I’m banned from Happy Birthday. For all my love of G&S, I didn’t audition when my school put on Princess Ida. But now my nerve was steeled.

“Of course you can sing,” people kept saying before the first rehearsal. “Everyone can sing.” Certainly, everyone there could sing rather well. I didn’t even know if I was a tenor or a bass. After a tune-up with the piano, it was decided I was “bass-ish”. Yet as the rehearsals went on, I started to lose my inhibitions. I could make my voice more or less match everyone else in the choral numbers. I could “tarantara” with the best of them.

And while everyone was much better than I was, we were all amateur in the very best sense. “Blancmangey” was the choir mistress’s view of one group effort. “The poshest bunch of Cornish policemen I’ve ever heard,” was another.

These weren’t rebukes. Everyone was doing this for simple pleasure rather than perfection. No prima donnas here. As we gathered in the room above the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich for the charity concert, the over-riding feeling was that everyone was having fun. And that’s what G&S is about. That’s why even after the gig was over, I’ve kept going to rehearsals. Maybe I’ll give the production a go . . .

- Join the Gilbert and Sullivan Society to receive its newsletter and information on recitals, 01279 446597, www.gilbertandsullivansociety.org.uk

- Hit the high notes at your nearest singalong screening of a classic musical, including The Sound of Music and Hairspray, 020-7372 9623, www.singalonga.net

- Find your nearest amateur dramatics society and list yourself as a singer or actor for local shows, www.amateurdramatics.info

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