Naughty Naughty Naughty / Letters Of Love

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But it did get in the charts and the guy responsible was Argentinian composer and arranger Waldo De Los Rios who demonstrated a lucrative ability to create easy listening versions of orchestral classics. The guys in my year at school who knew about ‘serious’ music, the ones who walked around the playground with a copy of Rory Gallagher’s ‘ Blueprint‘ or ELP’s ‘ Brain Salad Surgery’ under their arm, would have taken the piss relentlessly out of me if they’d known I’d purchased it, but I loved it. She had this very affected vocal style and I think she really fancied herself, thought she was a cut above every other singer in the charts and the media feted her because she seemed so NICE and NORMAL. As well as being the leader of the Top Of The Pops Orchestra for 15 years, he helped launch the career of Cilla Black (well, nobody’s perfect) and was musical director for a number of Dusty Springfield shows in the 60s (much more like it).

I’d really like to meet those people, see what they look like, find out what makes them tick, ask them to articulate what it was that motivated them to commit such an act of wanton cultural vandalism and then berate them publicly for their appalling lack of taste and intelligence (Yes, I mean you Queen fans). Had that version not been around maybe Waldo De Los Rios might have made it to Numero Uno and he might not have committed suicide in 1977, poor soul. Rex, a song title deemed obscene in the US, bizarrely, and renamed Bang A Gong, which just sounds silly. At a stretch I can understand why some misguided people, though not many, will have parted with some cash to have a copy of numbers 1 and 2 in this list of Hit Parade ignominy. An obvious choice you might say and, yes, of course it’s obvious but that doesn’t make it less or more rubbish and in some ways its success was inexplicable but not in others.But Georgy Girl was such a great song and the production raised it from the mundane so pretty much any band would have been successful with it. It certainly sounded distinctive due to the rather odd, nasal vocal style of singer Sally Carr, who I think fancied herself a bit. The Best of The Seekers LP knocked The Beatles (white album) off the top of the album charts and stopped the Rolling Stones getting to No.

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. There was a buzz around this record that meant everyone was talking about it and you can understand why. 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.

Their appearance on TOTP was particularly excruciating, all the players looking suitably embarrassed to be there. hit at that, but the song had been played to death on the radio and Stevie Wonder wasn’t releasing it as a single, so for many people it was not the next best thing, but the only way of possessing the song in single form.

At the time CCCC it was the longest song ever to reach the top spot, which, I suppose, is some minor claim to fame. In a previous edition of TOTP he was asked to award some prizes to the most glamorous girls in the audience that particular week. Irrespective of the source, all of our collectables meet our strict grading and are 100% guaranteed.

The contest was won that year by the lovely Severine (female singers were only known by their first names in those days) representing Monaco with the excellent Un Banc, Un Arbre, Une Rue. The programme also ramped up Theo’s super-attractiveness to women with him having a glamorous, often non-speaking, ladyfriend driving him around in a sports car every week. In his defence, this record was probably the aesthetic nadir of a long, particularly prolific and successful career and he is still performing. A bit like the thing in Quatermass that just kept growing and growing into some unspeakable ghastliness….