A PROFESSIONAL musician has been left devastated by the theft of his “priceless” computer.

Thieves struck as Ricky Stevenson was packing up his equipment after playing at a friend’s birthday party in Norfolk Road, Weymouth.

Mr Stevenson is the singer in the UK Pink Floyd tribute act, popular local band The Crack and also performs solo.

The black Hewlett Packard laptop contained backing tracks and movie back-drops which are vital to his work with the tribute act and for his solo work.

The computer also contains sentimental pictures including his children’s first day at school.

He has issued a reward for the safe return of the computer which has the serial number CNF012FSW3.

The laptop is easily recognisable as all the arrow keys are missing as are about five of the keys from the top row of the keyboard.

The 47-year-old said the computer, which cost £480 new, was almost priceless to him due to its content.

He said: “It’s devastating that I’ve lost thousands of hours of work in the blink of an eye. It’s my life on a hard drive. The thieves can throw away the computer but please give me back the hard drive.

“I cannot replace it. It’s got thousands of hours of work on it. I’ve backed up some of my solo stuff but not all of it and so I’ve been working on it for the past two or three days to get as much together but the thought of putting the Pink Floyd stuff together, because there’s so much work, I just cannot get my head around it. Only last week I was thinking I should have backed it up.”

The singer, who lives in Wyke Regis, Weymouth, finished playing at the party at around 11pm on Friday, September 16, when he bumped into an old friend and started chatting.

He said: “It was a great party and then because I was under a gazebo and it started to shower I thought I would pack down and put all my gear into the conservatory, and there was somebody I had not seen for a while and thought I’d have a chat and then get a taxi home.

“Then when I went to grab my laptop and guitar I found the computer bag was there with the power lead but somebody had taken my laptop.”

Dorset Police confirmed a laptop had been stolen but had not yet been handed in.