He has played on several major television and film soundtracks including Not the Nine O'Clock News, Three of a Kind, The Lenny Henry Show, Alas Smith and Jones, Red Dwarf, Blackadder, Mr Bean, A Perfect Spy, 2.4 Children and French & Saunders. During this time, Burns became a mainstay of composer Howard Goodall's "TV" Band. In 1987, he formed Robert Burns Music and composed film and advertising music for MTV, DeBeers Diamonds, The Sunday Times, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, IBM, P&O Cruises and British Aerospace. In 1979, Burns was invited to perform in the West End production of the rock opera "Tommy", by its composer Pete Townshend of the Who, and in 1984 joined the "Abbacadabra" musical, working with Elaine Paige for Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of ABBA and Sir Tim Rice. Following on from his work on British TV comedy shows, Burns played bass in subsequent theatre productions, namely the "Rowan Atkinson in Revue" tour (1981), which won an Olivier Award, and "Not in Front of the Audience" with the "Not the Nine O'Clock News" cast in London (1982). Around this time, Burns played, along with drummer Jeff Allen, in support of comedian Spike Milligan, Lynsey de Paul and Gerard Kenny at a charity event at the Commonwealth Institute in London. From 1992, Burns was departmental head at the Guitar Institute in Acton (assisted by Dave Kilminster, Shaun Baxter, Terry Gregory and Iain Scott), BassTech and Drumtech, the contemporary music departments of the London College of Music. He led the design team that developed a one-year foundation programme in popular music followed by the first popular music performance degree, validated by Thames Valley University (now University of West London) in 1999. He taught as a visiting lecturer at Brunel University, Leeds College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and The Royal Academy of Music. He was principal examiner for grade exams in bass guitar for Rockschool/Trinity College of Music from 1992 to 1998. He gained a B.A.(Hons) at Brunel (1996) and became a Fellow of the London College of Music in 1997 and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2006. He is a member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. From 2001 until 2018, Burns lectured in music at the University of Otago where he earned his PhD and attained the position of Associate Professor in Music, specialising in popular music performance, arranging, composition, music industry studies and cultural studies.