Michael Burman was born a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. His early life was totally uneventful and, by the standards of his planet, quite normal. This all ended, however, when, via a freak of inter-galactic interference, he heard Johnny Hodges playing "Things Ain't What They Used to Be", broadcast across inter-stellar space.
Indeed, things were no longer to be what they used to be. He lost no time in boarding the next spaceship for Earth, and, throughout the long journey, studied the English-language instructional recordings which he had ordered from Amazing's Next-Light-Day delivery. These included such useful phrases as "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" and "Bird lives!" He wasn't to know, however, that the recordings had been made by the BBC, with the result that he speaks with a British accent: please don't hold this against him.