We were living close by the Thames at Wallingford when I started to do gigs with Andrew Frank. Sir Max Mallowan (famous archaeologist) and Lady Mallowan (the novelist Agatha Christie) lived close by. We kept a punt in their dilapidated boathouse so Andrew and I worked out our first repertoire on the river. Somehow we ended up taking the watery name of Three Men in a Boat, which must have been homage to Jerome K. Jerome’s humorous travelogue of 1889, though I don’t remember the book as being especially funny and anyway their boat was a skiff not a punt. Perhaps the concertina counted for two, being a Jeffries Duet.
I made up a poster for us with Letraset and Cow Gum. In retrospect it seems an odd piece of marketing for a folk duo. Happily our act is still on the road, though not under that name, and that pole is in regular use propelling the same punt. In summer it’s often moored on the tidal Thames by Richmond Bridge, courtesy of master boat-builder Mark Edwards MBE, and over the years it has been towed on a trailer and launched to explore wherever a heavy punt can be manhandled over the bank and its pole can touch the bottom.
Since Wallingford days the punt has visited 
several other stretches of the Thames between Cricklade and Richmond, the Cherwell at Oxford, the Cam at Cambridge and Upware, the Great Ouse at Godmanchester, the Medway at Tonbridge, the Stour at Blandford Forum, the Basingstoke Canal near Farnborough, the Colne near Colchester, the Wissey near Thetford, the Bure and its broads near Acle, the Waveney at Bungay, and the Ouse north of York.
Further suggestions welcomed !
In September 1979 Melody Maker carried a profile of Andrew’s earlier duo with Mike Mann : Mike saturnine, punkish, ‘a direct descendant from the Ian Dury School of Second Hand Car Dealers and Card Sharps’, Andrew ‘an angelic-faced curly-haired overgrown choirboy’, emerging from behind the audience, hands nonchalantly tucked into baggy trouser pockets, with a trained tenor voice and a flair for acrobatics. Mike was the Dark One, Andrew was The Voice, and together they were The Odd Couple, winning over doubtful audiences in Derby and Glasgow.
Sealey special, 
Wheatstone did eventually switch to equal temperament tuning. He also patented in 1844 a second type of instrument that was mechanically identical but radically different in its fingering system. The ‘duet’ or ‘double’ model resembled a piano keyboard in placing low notes under the fingers of the left hand, and high on the right. But that let the cat out of the bag. Other makers had their own ideas about improving the note arrangement of a concertina, and as Wheatstone’s patents expired they brought new systems onto the market. Most popular were the Anglo-German or ‘Anglo’ type where buttons sounded different tones on the push and the pull, giving a rhythmic lift to dance music. The design of the duet concertina was tweaked this way and that to enhance its chromatic range and ability to tackle music with a richer harmonic texture. And Wheatstone’s original patented scheme, the ‘English’ system, continued in production and still retains a loyal following.
World in a Box 