How did working on yachts and playing piano for movie producers’ wives land Jane Fraser the job of head of live events for MTV Italy?

As a child I thought I’d be a concert pianist. I studied a lot when I was younger and I did perform for a while. I was even tutored by the legendary Fanny Waterman from the ages of 15 to 18. I played in loads of youth orchestras and with the school. But I was obsessed with travel.

At 15 I hitchiked to Greece in the school holidays. I never had any money, so I’d sleep on beaches and take lots of odd jobs to pay my way.

My dad was really strict, but my mum was probably the one who thought it was best to let me get on with it - though I never told her the half of what I got up to on those trips! I took a year out before college and went to Munich, where I mostly did bar work and stuff.

I went to Middlesex Polytechnic to study performing arts, and majored in jazz paino. I did some session work. But I got bored with that after a year and a half, and ended up marrying this guy I’d met three weeks before – a bit of a whirlwind romance.

That didn’t stop me from disappearing off to Antibes to work on the boats, without him – though we were married on and off for about four years. I got hired as a deck hand on a yacht run by a famous Hollywood movie producer. He ended up asking me to come back to Paris with him to play piano for his wife.

It was a mad job. I’d answer the door for them, and then he’d sometimes send me off to look for his wife when she’d gone out drinking and hadn’t returned. They lived in the apartment where ‘Last Tango in Paris’ was filmed. And they gave me the studio next door – which had been Modigliani’s atelier – to live in. His wife used to paint these awful pictures, and there was a Steinway in her studio. So I used to sit there and play for her. They paid me incredibly well and I ended up taking off for India for nine months on the proceeds.

I suppose my media career kicked off in London. I was doing all sorts of odd jobs: I ran the offices for a ‘Women in Manual Trades’ company; and I worked in a printers in the East End. Then I got a job as an intern on Super Channel. After three weeks, their presenter got sick. And though I was really only there to answer the phones, I ended up doing presenting, music programming, everything you could possibly imagine. Then I got a job at MTV Europe, doing all their script writing, and working as a music researcher. They had only just invented the job, so it was all fresh. I got involved in the playlist meetings.

About 13 years ago, I got sick of living in London and went to live in Umbria, where I got a job in a bar, even though I didn’t speak a word of Italian and hadn’t a clue about making a proper cup of coffee. I was crap at studying and just thought it’d be a good way to learn Italian. I did tons of jobs in Italy. I did life modelling for art colleges. I sold coloured wigs in nightclubs in Rimini. I worked in an antique market selling crystals.

Ballet was my introduction to event management. I got to know a guy (Lorca Massine, son of Leonide who was Diaghelev’s choreographer) who was looking for someone to produce his ballet tours. And so I did that for quite a while. We were working with the Warsaw Ballet, the National Ballet of Bulgaria, all kinds of wonderful troupes, and I was basically his manager, producing the tours. I also got a part time job in a recording studio, and ended up becoming studio manager. From there, I started producing events for MTV Italy in Milan as a freelance producer for live events. Then their head of production went off on maternity leave and they sort of kidnapped me and kept me in Milan. I’ve never gone back to live in Umbria, though I have a base there.

Now I do all the live events for MTV Italy, but a lot of other stuff for MTV International. Out of all the MTVs in the world, in Europe we produce the most live concerts.  It is a lot of work, and very tiring. But it is also a lot of fun, though we’re not the ones that get to swan around and party. We’re the sweaty, greasy ones in the back rooms making it all happen.

Sometimes I think it’d be nice to get to go somewhere where I’d have to get all done up. I don’t really go to gigs if I’m not working. It feels really odd. I get bored after half an hour.

I still play the piano, though, just for my own entertainment. I have an upright Bechstein, and it goes everywhere with me – it’s moved about 50 times. I have been roped in to accompanying people, especially when I lived in Umbria, I’d be asked to do all these bizarre expat amateur dramatic things.

I’ve never been afraid of change. I’ve got myself into a lot of jobs through the power of bullshit, and just learned as I went along. My parents were really good in that way. They were always very positive about our choices, and taught us that if you didn’t like things, you could change them. We moved around a lot as kids, and it later turned out that my dad has Romany ancestors, so that explains a lot.

You could say I’m a thrill-seeker. For the first few years, when I was producing these huge live events, I’d have sleepless nights, just thinking about what could go wrong. You never really lose that fear. But I was just as scared going to work in the bar in Italy where I couldn’t speak a single word of the language and people would get really pissed off with the rubbish coffees I’d make. That was just as bad in its way.

But I’ve always worked. I started working in hotels at 14. I’ve always thought that, if anything happens I know there’s always something I can turn my hand to.

Regrets? The only thing I wish that I’d done is to follow it through and become a musician – NOT just as a hobby.

I still love to travel. I’d much rather be travelling than sitting in an office. I love working in unfamiliar places and with unfamiliar people, and just finding out how to make things work.

Some of the wildest times I had working were on the boats. We were such a maverick bunch. You get all kinds of people attracted to that scene, plenty of people like me just looking for excitement and change, but also people on the run, down and outs, misfits. And all these millionaires with their yachts think they’ve got the crème de la crème working for them! We’d have such a laugh. Especially with the movie producer’s crew – he was something of a legend because he had such a fear of water. We’d go through all the rigmarole of lifting anchor and sailing out of Antibes, only for him to have a panic attack. So we’d have to turn round, drop him off, and he’d be driving along the coast beside us, in his Rolls Royce, while we sailed off, pissing ourselves laughing.

I like a challenge. The jobs I look back on with most satisfaction are those that you just wouldn’t expect to pull off. Like when Quincy Jones’s American production company pulled out of his ‘We Are The Future’ show, in Rome, at three weeks notice. There were massive acts like Santana, Alicia Keys, Ennio Morricone booked. We stepped in, pulled it all together - this huge, five hour event at the Circus Maximus. It was really amazing working with Quincy (my hero!) and it went incredibly well.

What have I learned about the world of work? That it’s OK to make it up as you go along. There are so many people you see that seem to know exactly what they’re doing. Most of them are just bluffing, the same as you. To me, it’s all about how you can motivate people and make things happen. I often think, when I start a job, that I’m completely unfit for it. And it’s not until the job’s done that I look back and think, actually, I did that pretty well.

I’m adaptable. And I’m not easily panicked. My view is: you just see how much you can put into a project, and you end up getting a lot out.

Interviewed by Veronica Simpson