Naughty Naughty Naughty / Letters Of Love

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Now this character reportedly ‘discovered’ Helen Shapiro and wrote two of her first hits, Don’t Treat Me Like A Child, (which nowadays sounds a bit dodgy given she was only 14), and the formulaic Walking Back To Happiness, which got to No 1 and for which he received an Ivor Novello award in 1961.

While listening to Stuart Maconie’s wonderful ‘ Freakzone‘ on Radio 6 Music recently, he played a track by a band from the 70s I remembered vaguely, Stavely Makepeace. A final grim footnote on this particular chart finds the first football team other than the 1970 England World Cup Squad having a hit.It sounded oddly similar to Mouldy Old Dough and I was also vaguely aware that Lieutenant Pigeon was linked to Stavely Makepeace.

In his defence, this record was probably the aesthetic nadir of a long, particularly prolific and successful career and he is still performing.Often these records are one-hit-wonders that squeezed into the charts by virtue of some twist of fate, something in the wind that carried them out of the pit of obscurity that they richly deserved to be consigned to forever. But Savalas made the role his own and from 1973 it became required viewing for a winter’s Saturday night for nearly ten years.

Features of the act include dropping or hitting the baby, Judy and Punch battering each other with the ‘slapstick’ (some saw this as domestic violence) and included malevolent characters such Jack Ketch, the Hangman, a ghost, a skeleton and the devil. Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep took the charts by storm in June 1971, rising a massive 18 places to oust equally as middle of the road (lower case) Tony Orlando and Dawn with Knock Three Times off the top spot. Which just goes to prove that musical maxim (that I made up), the blander you are, the higher you fly. And this is why the charts have always been so fascinating (See ‘ The Sad Demise of the Singles Pop Charts‘) Sexy!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). There was a buzz around this record that meant everyone was talking about it and you can understand why. His first abortive attempt as a pop star in the early 60s included being discovered by Screaming Lord Sutch and joining his backing band The Savages.