Andrew Studley, who runs his own print and design company in South Wales, is by all accounts quite a good amateur pianist, who likes to entertain friends in hotel lobbies and cruise ship bars in the small hours, long after the hired professional player has gone home. Now, health and safety has found a way to stop him: his hands aren’t insured.

Mr Studley, 40, and his wife Carol were recently on board the luxury cruise ship Silver Whisperfrom Southampton to the Mediterranean when, during an overnight mooring in Monte Carlo, he was encouraged by fellow-passengers in the ship’s bar to run through his repertoire.

Crew members stopped him. The music was fine, but there was a problem; unlike Liberace or his hero, Richard Clayderman, Mr Studley had not insured his hands.

He had a similar experience at a hotel in Southampton. “I don’t know what they were all frightened of,” Mr Studley said at his home in Cowbridge, near Cardiff. “Did they think I was going to throw the piano overboard? I am actually quite a good pianist; I was a professional teacher.”

Bowing to the current fervour for small-minded nannyism, Mr Studley has now insured his hands for £2million – at a cost of £60 a year. Terrible things can happen to a pianist, for which hand insurance is a wise precaution. Next to the lid of a 9ft concert grand slamming shut on the performer’s fingers, the player’s worst fear is fonic dystonia, a kind of repetitive strain injury in which the fingers no longer do as they are told.

A spokeswoman for Florida-based Silversea Cruises, on whose liner Mr Studley was banned, confirmed yesterday he would be “welcome back at any time” now he is insured.

Mr Studley claims his relaxed style of playing is good for his health, and that he is unlikely to injure himself. “It’s not as though I was Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard,” Mr Studley said yesterday.

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