Everyone thinks drummers are dumb. They are the third most joked about musicians in the world – after accordion players and viola players. Whole web sites exist that are devoted to the laughing at and tearing down of their chosen forms of expression. Drummer jokes draw on themes as diverse as their inability to keep time, their personal hygiene, and their lack of intellectual prowess.

These jokes may or may not have a grain of truth at their centre, but the drummers I have known guffaw as loudly at these jokes as anyone else. I for one, don’t believe drummers are dumb.

Take my mate Thumpa for example. Take him to the library, because there, he will have to tone down his raucous laughter and his incessant table tapping, and he will read voraciously for hours. Thumpa loves a good wad of text and he is particularly keen on reference books. Last year he worked his way through Grey’s Anatomy and could quickly identify his patella from his scapula, his tibia from his fibula and diagnose the difference between an engorged subcutaneous haematoma and a benign epidermal blastoma. He’s good.

Six months ago, Thumpa was at the State Library, hunched over some dictionary of literary quotations while he tapped the floor with his rubber-tipped pencil, the way he does. He looked up – to stretch his dorsal ligaments – and became aware of a young lady staring at him from a nearby desk. Thumpa smiled. The girl stared. Thumpa winked and made a cool, clicking noise with his tongue. The girl kept on staring. Realising that he wasn’t making any headway towards his desired outcome, he went back to reading and tapping. Having finished the book, he started on the next one in his stack, Farming Practices…A History and a Future.

When Thumpa reads, he likes to repeat aloud any phrases or words that move or amuse him; he likes to share his enjoyment with the unseen world.

So, when he came across a funny sentence structure in the farming book, his pencil tapping increased in intensity and he spoke to the ceiling in a fake Texan accent.

‘…At this point you will need to inseminate any broody hens as they will become increasingly violent without the presence of a rooster.’

A book slammed into the side of his head and landed, spine up, pages spread, on the floor next to him. “Hey!” said Thumpa.