Tony Bacon considers the musician's most valuable appendage.

"Take a look at these hands," suggested Mr David Byrne all those years ago. And so we will. As Mr Max Bygraves pointed out even longer ago, "You need hands." And no-one more than a musician.

Just put the magazine down so you can still read it, and lay your hands out either side. Ever thought about them very much? If you're a musician, they must be the most valuable... well, they must be amongst the most valuable parts of your body.

How valuable? A leading underwriter at Lloyds of London told us that he has on his books "hundreds" of entertainers, including Big Pop Stars, who have insured their hands, specifically, against damage. Often they will be steered toward the more general Permanent Disability Policy. But it's the hands that are inevitably viewed as the commodity worth insuring.

Now are your hands still there on either side of One Two, uninsured though they may be? If they are, count the fingers. Eight, yes? And thumbs: one, two. Good. We're not sure how many classical pianists read the magazine, but someone told us that amongst such people there is or was an ivory-tickler with five fingers and a thumb on each hand. The well-known pianist and composer of piano music Serge Rachmaninov tried operating on his own hands to improve their span, apparently, but had no extra sproutings. Go and count your keyboard player's fingers — there's a crisp One Two fiver for the first picture of a polyfingered keyboardist.

Not that we can vouch for the musicianly potential of a baby, dead on arrival at an east London hospital in the 1920s, who, it is reported, had no less than six fingers and a thumb on each hand. Not wanting to feel too unbalanced, the unfortunate child is also said to have had 15 toes. Pity the wunderkind so quickly ceased to be.

Musicians, of course, develop special powers in their hands as their chosen instrument begins to make its mark — often quite physically. If you've been guitaring for any length of time, you may care to examine the double-jointed quality of your left thumb. Assuming you're right-handed, it may well double back on itself reasonably spectacularly while your quite normal right thumb won't move that way at all. Ah, the pressures of a fretting hand.

And keep those precious hands' nails cut, too. There's a bloke in India, the ever-helpful Guinness Book Of Records assures us, who hasn't cut his since 1952. In 1983, the last time anyone got near him with a tape measure long enough, his left-hand nails measured 126½in long. In other words about 250 times longer than yours or mine. Well, mine, anyway. Finger pickings out for Mr Chillal too, as long nails quickly begin to turn and curl around on themselves. Weird. And what are finger nails made of? Calcium? My fisherman friend used to tell me that fishes feel no more pain when the hook goes in their mouth than when you cut your finger nails. Makes you think.

Professional anatomists are not much help in clearing up the many mysteries of the hand, either. They will happily tell you, for example, that, "When the metacarpophalangeal joint is flexed, any tension in the belly of extensor digitorum cannot be transmitted to the two terminal phalanges because its tendon is fixed to the base of the proximal phalanx." On hearing this, our own Dr Spliff toked heavily and concluded that what these anatomists mean is that it is impossible to use a tremolo arm and a fine-tuning bridge at the same time with one hand. We agreed and awaited the metacarpophalangeal joint.

To pursue the faint whiff of a joke here, we might also mention joint-cracking at this stage. You know, when you link the fingers of each hand together across your chest and push inwards, outwards or upwards, to be greeted by a reasonably loud cracking of joints. It usually is interpreted as, "Right chaps, let's get on with this pre-tour rehearsal, then," and can be seen effectively demonstrated by Martin Brammer of the Kane Gang on page 12 (outwards push) and page 13 (upwards push) of our April number. Did you know that the cracking is due to the sudden reduction in pressure thus effected, in the joint, which causes nitrogen and other gasses to be released from the synovial fluid which "cushions" the two bones? Also, that the fluid is so-called because people used to think it resembled egg-white (syn/ovum, like/egg)? Wild.

But be careful you don't break anything. Hands are so fragile, really. First sign of a fracture might appear along the first line of knuckles — if you see a dip or an odd shape around here, and feel any pain or notice any swelling, go see the doc. The lowest joint in your thumb, down near the wrist and under the fleshy lump, is generally considered the most crucial joint in the hand. Injure that and your hand is almost totally useless, as so many functions use the thumb — think of the action of fretting a note on guitar, or holding a drum stick. God knows how Mark King would get on. You might get away with playing a keyboard or programming a drum machine, but you'd doubtless be in pain. So watch those thumbs.

At least we know what the thumb is — no confusion. But what do we call the fingers? In guitar tutors, usually, moving first to the finger next to the thumb and through to the little finger, it's simply 1, 2, 3 and 4. But number 3 in that scheme is generally referred to as the "fourth finger" by pianists. Say "fourth finger" to a violinist and he'll concur with the guitarists and stick up his little finger.

The best bet, apparently, joining our group of professional anatomists for just a few more brief seconds, is to call the finger next to the thumb the Index Finger. Then comes the Middle Finger (obvious), next the Ring Finger (a reference to an obscure bonding ceremony), and lastly the how-many-bassists-do-you-know-who-actually-use-it Little Finger. No more confusion, apparently.

Not that as musicians we deal much with confusion, now do we? Suppose, however, that you were a longbowperson in, oh, the 15th century. That would be confusing. No Walkmen to play all your tapes on, no motorway systems to speed you to your many and varied jobs, no nuclear weapons to worry about. Just plain old bows and arrows. And if the French caught you and found out you were a longbowperson, well... do you know what they'd have done? They would have chopped off the index finger and middle finger of your arrow hand. Yuk! That way, England would effectively be minus one more longbowperson.

Why do I tell you all this? Because this is how the now famous and oft-used two-fingered "up yours" salute is said to have originated. Just before a battle with those nasty French types, the remaining English longbowpersons would wave their still-existent and crucial two fingers in the air. Do this in remembrance of them. A story like that deserves a round of applause, surely?

Which leaves us with that Guinness book again. The duration record for "continuous clapping" (that's an average of 140 claps per minute audible at 100yds, says the Guinness adjudicator), is 50 hours and 17 minutes. Time your audience tonight, and get your claim in first. Off hand, we wouldn't hold out too much hope.

HANDNOTE. Evidence that continued playing will assist the musician's unhealthy hands comes to us from New York, where 69-year-old Les Paul has been advised by his doctors regularly to run his dextrous digits over six strings to prevent his ageing fingers from becoming arthritic. So Les, one of the most important figures in the development of the electric guitar, whips out his axe every Monday night at an NYC dive.