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Legendary Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler has revealed he got his playing style from strumming a tennis racket as a child.

Knopfler, 74, said that he was left-handed, but while he was pretending the racket was the musical instrument in his youth, his older sister turned it round and told him: ‘That’s the way you play it.’

Asked by BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs presenter Lauren Laverne about his technique, he said: ‘Well, it’s because of my big sister Ruth, and I think big sisters are very important in this world.

‘I was playing it, I was pretending it was a guitar, and she turned it round so that I was holding it right-handed, and she said that’s the way you play it.’

Glasgow-born Knopfler explained that, as he was left-handed playing a right-handed guitar, his stronger hand was forming the notes.

He said it gave him ‘a little bit of flexibility’, and allowed him to do a vibrato (bending the strings vertically) on ‘two or three strings at a time’.

Dire Straits had five UK top ten singles and four No 1 albums, and worldwide hits with Money For Nothing and Sultans Of Swing.

Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 at 10am today.