A retired businessman has spent £500,000 pursuing his life-long passion for music maestro Annunzio Paolo Mantovani - and even puts on his very own concert in honour of his hero.

Paul Barrett, 70,  - who you might recognise from BBC reality tv show Close to the Edge - has learnt to play several instruments because of Mantovani and has forked out thousands of pounds buying original ones from his original orchestra.

He now pays £20,000 a time to hire a 48-strong orchestra, a conductor and a music venue to replicate note-for-note the classic Mantovani Orchestra, a performance he plays all the percussion parts in.

The most recent show, called the Magic of Mantovani Orchestra, was held last Sunday and despite attracting an audience of almost 1,000 people Mr Barrett barely broke even.

Although Mantovani is not widely known today, the bandleader was Britain's most successful album act before the Beatles and the first act to sell over a million albums.

He played the violin on Vera Lynn's White Cliffs of Dover and songs like Charmaine, Greensleeves and Song from the Moulin Rouge sold over one million copies.

He sold 60 million records in the UK and the US and was considered such a heartthrob he received more than 700 marriage proposals in one year.

Mr Barrett was aged 12 when his father, a professional violinist, took him to his first Mantovani concert.

He spent his time studying the performer's career, went to concerts and even signed up for music lessons with Mantovani's longtime percussionist, Charles Botterill.

Mr Barrett learnt every arrangement and perfected the percussion parts, secretly hoping his mentor Botterill would have to miss a show from illness and Mantovani would call him up as a stand-in.

But Botterill never missed a performance and so he never got the chance to perform with his idol, who died in 1980 aged 74.

When Mr Barrett sold his family builders merchant business in Sheffield and retired in 1996, he moved to Bournemouth, Dorset, where Mantovani had lived before his death.

He decided to recreate the orchestra and approached the Mantovani family, who gave him access to the original music scores, free of charge.

He even paid £50,000 for the 35mm film and rights to recordings of a 1950s American TV series Mantovani did.

He put up £15,000 of his own money to stage the first concert in 2008, with a 45-strong orchestra made up of members of top orchestras and session musicians from London who played to an audience of about 900 people.

On Sunday he held the seventh concert with an orchestra of 48 musicians, with audience members travelling from as far as India and America for the show. Fifteen members of the Mantovani family also attended.

Mr Barrett plays all the percussion parts, as Botterill did, including drums, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, xylophone, glockenspiel and vibraphone.

He said: "I could spend my money on exotic cruises or maybe a top of the range car but I've chosen to invest in reinventing the Mantovani Orchestra.

"It's an expensive business but to me it's worth every penny.

"I went to my first concert when I was 12. I was totally gobsmacked.

"I met Charles Botterill, he had been with Mantovani since the 1930s. He realised how keen I was so he took my details and invited me to London to teach me percussion and he introduced me to Mantovani in the green room.

"I immediately realised this music and the sound of this orchestra was probably going to shape my musical career.

"I went to the concerts every year for many years in all different venues and I got to know just about everything about the music.

"I'm a purist. I want to use the handmade instruments of that era and I want to do it as it should be done.

"To pay the orchestra and with all the publicity and printing costs I spend about £20,000 each time.

"I do lose money on every show but this is a magnificent obsession of mine.

"My partner Trisha thinks I'm a lunatic but she comes to every concert and supports me. She knows that my first love is the music."

Mr Barrett hired the Bournemouth Pavilion music venue for Sunday night's performance.

He spent about £12,000 to hire the orchestra and about £5,000 on publicity, printing and advertising.