HOW wrong can you be? A late middle-aged man with silver hair is moving across the pub towards me to introduce himself.

He doesn't need to. I know who he is: Phil Lloyd, the fundraising boss of the Dame Hannah Rogers Trust. That bit was easy; our meeting was pre-arranged.

But from that glimpse I thought I knew the man inside, too.

He's not walking too smoothly, so I'm reckoning he's not the sporting type, for starters; probably never had any exercise since PE at school.

I've heard the voice. The 'Hello' was on the plummy side, so before he spent his working life behind a desk, I bet he was at a posh university. Add in the well-covered frame and the blazer on top, and the picture is complete. His experience of life is restricted to boardrooms, I can say with a fair degree of certainty; his world view doesn't extend much beyond the south of England; his musical taste is whatever is piped into the golf club bar and the most excitement his socialising has ever reached is polite applause at a Cliff Richard concert.

How wrong can you be? Very, very wrong. A few minutes later he's telling me about the time the punk rock band he was promoting at a London pub got a bit over-enthusiastic with their audience involvement.

"It was the Saints, a band from Down Under," says Phil. "There's a lot of gobbing (spitting) going on and somebody in the audience aims a punch at the lead singer, an Australian , from Brisbane, who butts him. All hell breaks loose.

"I got out of there fast."

If it hadn't got lairy, Phil might have been in the mosh pit pogoing with the hardcore fans – but his knees were wrecked by a combination of too much rugby and cricket in his youth. Turns out he played the willow- and-leather game to a very respectable standard. His off-breaks were a potent weapon in the Middlesex league, one of the most competitive in England.

His world view extends rather further than the Home Counties and the South West. He's seen more of the globe than I can name and in rich variety, from the high life in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, to the lowest of existences in impoverished east Africa.

There is a Cliff Richard connection, though not the kind that I would ever have guessed.

This former senior executive at recording industry giant EMI helped Sir Cliff set up his own label, and the legacy from encountering that great British institution cast a benign shadow over his life.

Phil became a Christian in the early 1980s. "That saved my life," the 61-year-old says, with a look that mixes shame and relief. "The way I was living before then, it would have killed me." We're talking a rock'n'roll lifestyle with all the trimmings, including a serious drinking habit.

Phil wasn't seeking the crutch of religion to prop up a fractured life. Instead, a key attraction was that Jesus was anti-religion. This is no boardroom bore, but a man who has seen and tasted life and decided that to give existence meaning he has to work in an organisation devoted to good work.

It's no surprise, then, that Phil's a key figure at one of the South West's best-known charities, which is a beacon for good practice nationwide. He's the head of supporter relations for the Dame Hannah Rogers Trust.

Everybody knows about Dame Hannah, the Ivybridge institution which provides education, therapy, care and respite for children and young people aged five to 25 with profound physical disabilities: "The only special school of its type in the entire UK that's ever received three outstanding Ofsted reports," adds Phil, proudly, "and they're on the Ofsted roll of honour."

But supporter relations I'm not sure about. Time for another guess. It means fundraising, right? We're talking money, money, money.

Wrong. "Some people coming into this (kind of work), all they do is talk about money," says Phil. "Fundraising isn't about money; it's about relationships with people.

"Yes, we're in competition with other charities for funds, but this isn't like the competition between Adidas and Nike. Nike's mission statement is probably something like 'Crush Adidas'."

That might sound like PR talk, but Phil insists that Dame Hannah doesn't simply chase money. Instead, the trust seeks people who will benefit the charity and get something back themselves.

Part of the reason is to do with loyalty. A donor who's in a relationship with a charity will hopefully become a repeat or even a long-term donor, he says, but more than that, Phil and his team – there are three full-time fundraisers and one part-time – will point donors towards other charities when appropriate.

"If that person has a relative with a terminal illness, it's imperative that they support St Luke's Hospice, or if they have a connection with the bereavement of a child they should support Jeremiah's Journey because that's the natural route.

"Pupils at Dame Hannah raise money for other charities," he points out. "Some were involved in the Race For Life for cancer charities and the school's always very busy on Red Nose Day.

"Having that attitude and doing those things gives us confidence in asking other people for money and I hope that they'll become impassioned with Dame Hannah."

By working hard, keeping costs down – across the whole organisation and within his department, which has shed one member of staff – efficiency has been maintained and income is doing more than holding up, despite the recession.

The downturn's tough, particularly on one important source of income for all charities. Trust funds' investments have been hit by the slump in the stock market, so they have less money to distribute to good causes.

"The upside is that we will produce this year more income than Dame Hannah has ever had in one year in its history, because we're good stewards of what we have.

"We're growing our income in a recession, by working harder and smarter and through good people recognising that we need help."

Dame Hannah's total projected gift income for the current year will be a shade over £500,000, out of a total budget of £5million – much of that statutory education funding.

As for the argument that a rich nation such as the UK shouldn't have to rely on charities to provide for its most vulnerable citizens – that the whole of Dame Hannah's £5million pot should come from public funds – Phil is realistic.

"Governments have to balance the needs of people with disabilities along with the needs of everybody else," he says. "In governments' eyes, people with disabilities are a small minority.

"The development a young person makes at Dame Hannah is quite extraordinary, but caring for a pupil is incredibly expensive and our graduates aren't going to end up contributing to the Gross National Product."

But there are great benefits to society through the work done by the charity, not least through respite care, which can help keep a family together. "The fastest-growing area of (marital) breakdown is in families in which there is a profoundly disabled child," he points out.

Then there's the incalculable good done through the connections between Dame Hannah pupils and the individuals who give money and time, a relationship that wouldn't exist if the taxpayer provided all.

Phil says: "For example, 29 Commando Regiment helps train our young people for the Ten Tors challenge on Dartmoor.

"The commandos are amazed and inspired at what the pupils achieve, both in the training and in the event. I defy anybody not to be greatly moved seeing one of our pupils cross the finishing line."

The feeling that there's more to life than can be calculated in money terms was at the root of Phil's life-changing move out of the music industry.

Born in Hull, he grew up in Germany where his father was based with the British Army Pay Corps. After he left school Phil had spells working in a variety of jobs, first in Denmark and then in Spain,

His twin loves of music and travel were united in a career when he joined EMI and worked in the international marketing division, from 1971 to 1980. Phil worked with artists outside the UK, ranging across the world and the genres, from flamboyant rockers Kiss and blues rock favourites Lynyrd Skynyrd to French disco band La Belle Epoque – fans of 1970s disco will remember Black Is Black, a number 2 hit for the trio – and jazz artists Stephane Grappelli and Oscar Peterson, and tapping the massive markets in India and Pakistan with soundtracks of Bollywood musicals.

In the United States he worked with singer and actress Liza Minnelli and in Australia that feisty punk band, the Saints.

In his memory are recollections of some of the excesses and just how 'difficult' some of the big-name artists could be: but Phil won't select and press Play. Privacy is all. The only on-the-record account he will give is about the technical and artistic abilities of even the worst offenders.

Life was glamorous, though; he spent much of his life on the road, in the air, in luxury hotels and in the VIP-only areas at concerts.

When he was asked to help Cliff Richard set up his own record label, Phil saw that life could be simpler and richer.

The Christian knight made a big impression. "There are a lot of Christians in bands, but working with Sir Cliff over a year I saw a guy who had his head together and his life sorted. I questioned my values and investigated who Jesus was.

"I read the New Testament and saw that this was a man who hated religion. The people he related to were religious outcasts. He had a lot of time for the homeless and prostitutes. They were his friends," he says.

"I had a Christian friend at EMI who I always used to take the mickey out of. The next time I saw him I didn't have to tell him I'd changed. He took one look at me and he knew I was a Christian."

Phil says he attends an Anglican church near his Sidmouth home, but that the denomination is unimportant to him. "That's the last time you'll hear me preach about Christianity, other than to say I'd have been dead without it. My lifestyle would have killed me."

He went on to work for the Mission Aviation Fellowship, the largest flying doctor service in the world.

Compared with his EMI days, when he'd be in New York one week, India the next and Japan a fortnight later, the frequent flying remained but the way of living was gone.

"In 1982 I was working in a Tanzanian village and woke up with cockroaches covering – literally covering – my face," he says. "I laughed when I thought that two years earlier I'd been chatting to Bette Davis in the Beverly Hills Hotel: but I can tell you that doing that work, and what I do now, gives me more satisfaction than anything I ever did in the music industry."

What remains from that high life is a love of music and many friends (he won't reveal who among them is a Dame Hannah donor, other than to say there's more than one). His taste takes in classical (Mozart, Schubert, Haydn), blues (John Lee Hooker) soul (Devon's Joss Stone) and rock (The White Stripes and The Killers).

The last gig he saw was by another favourite artist, Paul Weller, at Plymouth Pavilions. "I'd have loved to have worked with him," he says.

He's married to Nick, a teacher at Dame Hannah, has two grown-up daughters from a previous marriage and couldn't be happier with his job or with living in the 'just fabulous' South West.

The only thing he misses about his previous existence is the creativity, but not the excitement; he says there's a bigger kick to be had at Dame Hannah Rogers, seeing the achievements of pupils, the dedication of staff and the "amazing facilities" such as the newly-opened Hannahwood life skills centre for young adults.

"The artistic facilities are fantastic and there's even a recording studio: just wonderful," he says. "Just walking in there, you get a buzz."