He's been ‘strangling the cat' for nearly 50 years. Well, that's not the expression Tauranga's Duncan MacLeod would use. He'll tell you that term is only used by people who've never heard a good piper.

'A bad piper gives piping a bad name,” declares Duncan. 'But a good piper is as good as any musician.”

Tauranga bagpiper Duncan MacLeod leaves to play with the Auckland Police Pipe Band at the Edinburgh Tattoo today. Photo: Bruce Barnard.

Duncan admits his first experience of playing the pipes was 'bad”. Now he's puffing out tunes with the Auckland Police Pipe Band in the 66th annual Edinburgh Tattoo on August 7-29. He leaves for Scotland today.

Duncan stood with the Auckland Police Pipe Band dressed in King George VI's tartan for the first time in Edinburgh in 2009.

He remembers marching over the 1000-year-old cobble stones, through the gates of Edinburgh Castle, over the drawbridge and onto the esplanade playing his pipes.

If he had any hair on the back of his head, it would have stood up, but it definitely made his impressive handlebar moustache tingle.

'You feel 10-foot tall and bulletproof,” says Duncan. 'It's an honour and a privilege. The sensation of performing at the Edinburgh Tattoo in front of the castle, which has been there for thousands of years – the emotions that run through the body are indescribable.”

Duncan has been piping with the Auckland Police Band since 1973.

'It was actually piping that got me into policing,” says Duncan, who spent 36 years in the blue uniform.

He was senior sergeant at Mount Maunganui from 1999-2005 and retired as inspector area commander for Wanganui four years ago.

'When we left Rotorua I was still a lad,” he explains. 'I started to play for a band in Auckland called Boys Town. It was run by the police, and my tutors were constables. It was their influence that convinced me to join the police.”

It seems if you're a good policeman, you'll be a good piper. But both require discipline, insists Duncan.

'You have expectations, standards, a hierarchal system, pipe majors, sergeants and you've got to take instructions and commands in both professions,” he says.

Duncan loves his pipes. He'll play them any chance he gets.

'The thing about pipers is you'll almost never see them with a sheet of music in front of them,” says Duncan. 'They commit everything to memory.”

Duncan reckons he's got a good memory for his age. How old is he? He has a momentary lapse in thought. He's 59.

'I had to think about that for a second – and I've just had a birthday.”

It's the tunes that are planted in his memory, the 'hundreds” of pipe melodies he can play off by heart.

'I can remember some of the tunes that I first learned 50 years ago.”