For us the next 15 years were a wonderful adventure. Not every song we wrote was a hit. Not every project was a winner. But we certainly had more than our fair share of success and we sure as hell had a lot of laughs.

In 1970 we continued our incredible run of luck with the Eurovision Song Contest and came up with another winner, ALL KINDS OF EVERYTHING sung by DANA, representing Ireland, who also happened to come from Derry this made me a bit of a hero back home and my Mum and Dad the toast of our street!

That year the country was in the grip of soccer fever. This was WORLD CUP year and as reigning champions England were off to MEXICO to defend the title. We dreamed up the notion of recording a single and album with the players. It’s hard to believe today, when football records are the norm, that back then it was regarded as a completely wacky idea! Nonetheless we persevered and on the very day that the squad were flying out both the album and the single BACK HOME were number one in the charts.

We just didn’t realise what we had started!
Richard Harris who was a major movie star had enjoyed a surprise hit with a brilliant and complex seven minute song called MCARTHUR PARK. By any standards it was a pop classic, but Harris went back to making movies.

Harris and I used to drink in the same pub in Chelsea, The Queens Elm, popular with emigre Irish. We became friends and I persuaded him to go back into the studios to record again. The result was a hit single and album called MY BOY. On the back of that we toured the U.S. for eight weeks. I can’t remember a lot about that tour, and the bits I can remember you don’t want to hear about. Trust me.

We’d had some wild times, offstage and some unforgettable moments onstage, including a concert with the LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA. But once again, Harris went back to making movies.

It was a real bonus and one of the biggest thrills of my life when two years later MY BOY became an international smash hit for ELVIS PRESLEY.

The early seventies saw the emergence of a new phenomenon - the TEENYBOPPER, and record companies woke up to the fact that the kids who were buying singles were ten years younger than they used to be!

We set about getting our piece of the action, looking round for a band that would be a good vehicle for our songs. Out of the blue we got a call from DICK LEAHY who was running BELL RECORDS. He had a band he believed in but badly needed songs and production. The band was THE BAY CITY ROLLERS and a minor industry was born.

As writers and producers we sold millions of records with REMEMBER, SHANG-A- LANG, SUMMER LOVE SENSATION, ALL OF ME LOVES ALL OF YOU, we had number one records in the U.S. with the single SATURDAY NIGHT, and the album ROLLIN and we watched in awe as ROLLER MANIA became a worldwide craze, carried on a wave of tartan from South America to the Far East. Happy days!

Our teenybopper machine continued to crank out hits. We had five top ten hits with a band called KENNY (HEART OF STONE, GIVE IT ME NOW, THE BUMP, FANCY PANTS, JULIE ANNE) and a massive number one “FOREVER AND EVER”, for SLIK featuring MIDGE URE who went on to greater things including ULTRAVOX and BAND AID.

Around this time I had a phone call from SLIK’S manager in Glasgow. He was trying to persuade me to take on another act that he managed. He described him as a Scots folk singer who played the banjo, told a few gags and was just a bit mad. The whole package sounded like a particularly bad idea to me and I basically said “Thanks but no thanks!” He was however a very persuasive man and talked me into going to Scotland to hear this act. Am I ever glad that I changed my mind, because the act in question turned out to be a huge worldwide success and even more important has become one of my closest friends. His name? Billy Connolly!