The story of Eduardo is an incredible one. A guitar genius of inestimable talent and uncanny dress sense, his skill might have been lost on the hills and domestic animals of his native Italy were it not for the freak good fortune of a Club 18-30 holiday.

It was Duane of the internationally acclaimed combo Raw Lex, vacationing in sleepy Lake Omo, who discovered Eduardo practising his unique blend of heavy metal and Sicilian folk songs in a wine bar. Duane, who had been thrown off the Club 18-30 tour for vomiting too much, recognised Eduardo's talent, immediately offered him a position in Raw Sex, and then a job as guitarist.

Now Eduardo shares Duane's Waterloo council flat, "but in my heart I share with nothing my love of the guitar," he says, unusually.

Eduardo's career began, the family story says, when the police helped Eduardo's father bring home the last part of the record player he was secretly building as a birthday surprise. Sadly, Eduardo senior soon lost his job at the nearby Como Gramophone factory due to ill health but was able to stay at home and encourage his son as he listened to his favourite Led Zeppelin records and learned to play them on his home made guitar. His mother, still remembered for her years of hard work at the local Como Guitar Factory before a serious bout of shingles forced her to leave, helped refine the family talent.

Sadly, it did not lie in gramophone construction, as all Eduardo's records, unbeknownst to him, were actually playing at twice their proper speed. Remarkably, he still succeeded in copying them exactly, a freak stab of fate which he now realises played a large part in the development of his incredible technique. We spoke to Eduardo in Waterloo while bright disco lights flickered all around us. "They are Duane's," he said, in his lilting olive grove voice. "He has them in his bedroom to remind him of his many adventures in the disco dances of the world. They are on all the time because Duane has so many adventures."

What did Eduardo think of England. "I feel like I am England now... English is my home. I think your women are all lovely, and they all like the swarth Italian types like myself, you know.

"Each morning I exercise to keep myself fit for your lovely women, and for my guitar, of course. 50 press ups I do, over a life-size poster of Samantha Fox. I would love to work with Miss Fox, she is such a musician but nobody realise this. I would love to play my guitar for her, and for Richard Carpenter, and the Nolans, and perhaps even... yes even New Order."

Eduardo's love for his instrument must be very deep. "It is a passion, yes, and my advice to young guitarists who follow me, I know, is to always, always wear tight trousers. You should play as if your genitals are on the outside of your clothes. That is how I feel, but I think you can see this in my performance, yes?"

And of course he's right. Perhaps Eduardo's musical influences seem peculiar until you unearth the secret of his formative years. Because of a strange quirk in the record distribution system of Eduardo's village, it was only possible to obtain LPs whose covers contained photographs of naked women.

He has 17 copies of Electric Ladyland.

"I am met many famous people while I have been with Duane," whispers Eduardo, his Italianate features softening in dreamy reminiscence. "I am met Leslie Crowther in a lift, and he give me very good advice — best place to park Duane's car in BBC car park. Very big man. And John Enwistle, what a raving socialite... ha. He is at more parties than Strongbow cider. He gave me some of his trousers, and signed them."

Our time is up, but before we leave there is a question we must ask. Dawn French. Millions of TV viewers watched the kindling of a special relationship between Dawn and Eduardo on the last series of French and Saunders. "Please, no," an uncharacteristically shy Eduardo waves down our question. "I do not want to talk about Dawn... it is... she has her husbands Lenny Bennet, and I have guitar." As Duane's disco lights turn his face a delicate shade of orange I wonder, for the hundredth time, why there is never genius without personal pain.