What I didn’t know was that SM were very much an experimental, avant garde band who released some interesting stuff in the 70s. In desperation he was asked to deliver the lines in a suitably faux Shakespearian style, which he, of course, was only too happy to do and the rest is camp history. His CV becomes a little more interesting in a bizarre way, when in 1959 he produced the UK’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, Sing Little Birdie by Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson. What added an extra frisson of excitement to the record was that it was the theme to an ‘X’ rated film that was currently in the cinemas.

And his penchants for lollipops, which apparently were, in real life, a way of trying to get him to curb his smoking. To be fair, most of their songs were written by ace tunesmith Tom Springfield, brother of the amazing Dusty and ex-member of The Springfields.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Joy Sarney (born Florence Joy Crabtree; 1944) is an English female pop singer, best known for the single "Naughty Naughty Naughty" in 1977.

Someone in his management company obviously thought he needed an image and the bowler hat and cane was introduced. Co-written with Jim Dale (of Carry-On fame) it lost out to the legendary John Barrie and Don Black‘s easy listening classic ‘ Born Free‘, a song that became Matt Monro‘s theme tune (more on Matt later). They were the sort of band that stopped more interesting acts breaking through in the mid-sixties by releasing anodyne, unthreatening, harmonic fare, like this utter tosh. I collect non chart singles from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and have many 1000’s, this being one of them.A sometime collaborator with the legendary Tony Hatch (more on him later), Parton wrote a couple of successful songs for New Faces winners Sweet Sensation, the No. So using the Observers’ Book of Punk Rock Credibility as a guide they found a song that sounded vaguely ‘punky’, they went down the Kings Road and secured some second-hand jackets and thin ties, they bought some fashionably ironic sunglasses in Debenhams, had their shoulder-length hair cut and, hilariously, gave themselves punky, anti-establishment names. So this isn’t so much a rubbish song, how could you describe anything by Mozart as rubbish, it’s really a completely inexplicable hit. The band that eventually became Middle of the Road certainly got about a bit and spent time in Italy, where they claim to have played on Sophia Loren‘s solo album, via South America.

A couple of other interesting entries in this chart of 13 June 1971 in which Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep was the song on everyone’s lips was Sweet whose ‘ Co-Co‘ ushered in Glam Rock, and at No. They even had one of their later records, Slippery Hot 70s, featured in the excellent 2007 film Hot Fuzz.The three-TV channel decades of the 60s and 70s meant that if an artist became popular thanks to the show they were in, they became VERY big indeed and such was the case with Telly Savalas and his hit show, Kojak. His rather sleazy TOTP stage performance also implies he didn’t even understand the lyrics, changing the meaning of the song to one of ogling some burd in a sticky-carpeted, sweaty disco in Newcastle-under-Lyme with The Hit Man and Her in attendance.

It’s noticeable that Nicholas’s three hits were of a similar nature, unchallenging, slightly melodic and allowing him to perform his schtick with the bowler hat and cane. It seems rather churlish to condemn such a prolific and, in many cases, noteworthy artist like Paul Nicholas, but this is a truly dreadful record.Now he may have been the most irritating of all because when they, mercifully, decided to split up in 1968 he clearly believed the world wouldn’t be able to survive without The Seekers. Now it would be unfair to describe Telly’s effort, Bread’s If, as one of the worst covers of all time, but it is pretty awful.