But Savalas made the role his own and from 1973 it became required viewing for a winter’s Saturday night for nearly ten years. And yet… sometimes their awfulness provides us with a frisson of perverse pleasure in the same way some people get pleasure from sado-masochism. A bunch of prog rock musicians, some of whom were in the medieval ultra-prog group Gryphon noticed that Punk and New Wave records were selling more than they were, so decided it was worth a punt to pretend they were (ageing) punk musicians and release a record. 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. In 1965 Schroeder teamed up with band leader Johnny Pearson at Oriole Records and between them formed Sounds Orchestral who released 14 preposterously successful albums of easy listening orchestral arrangements of well known pop songs and film and TV themes.

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. 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).He got away with it in 1975 because he was riding an irresistible popularity wave, but anyone listening to it now and knowing nothing of Kojak would wonder what the hell was going on. There was a buzz around this record that meant everyone was talking about it and you can understand why. The first thing to say about this record is that it’s far from being a rubbish song and its success is not inexplicable.

around a year ago, a member of the team playing the Eggheads claimed to be Nigel Fletcher, former drummer of Lieutenant Pigeon. 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. Irrespective of the source, all of our collectables meet our strict grading and are 100% guaranteed. 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.And there’s something about this record I find compulsive, in the same way you can’t help looking at a crash on the motorway.

Without the cache of being a ‘novelty hit’, it might have been viewed as an interesting example of left-field pop. The song "Naughty Naughty Naughty", was a novelty love song between the singer and Mr Punch, and reached Number 26 on the UK Singles Chart in May 1977. What I didn’t know was that SM were very much an experimental, avant garde band who released some interesting stuff in the 70s.And Georgy Girl (1966), from the very interesting 60s film of the same name, was a great tune which got to No. But the great British Telly public had had quite enough of this type of opportunism and it reached a high of 47. he also arranged and conducted Spain’s runner-up entry to the 1971 Eurovision Song Contest En Un Mundo Nuevo ( In a New World) sung by the lovely Karina.

I know I’m being very critical about the cynicism of this record but I’ve not even mentioned the worst aspect of it yet. They may be rubbish and inexplicably successful but still hold their place in the pantheon of strange but memorable hits. And that was about it…until Songs in the Key of Life was released and (here’s the inexplicable bit) he managed to get the rights from Motown to release a version of the song. It turned into a very nice little earner for him but if there is any justice at all emerging from this sad, depressing episode, the song only got to 105 in the US singles charts. 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.

Mr Tambourine Man has to be heard to be believed and there is some serious acting going on in It Was A Very Good Year. So much strange stuff was successful and how could an orchestral version of a Mozart melody not just get into the charts but get to number 5 for god’s sake? His decent roles dried up a bit in the early 70s and TV was beginning to dominate people’s viewing habits.