Today is my birthday…..

And what was No.1 when I emerged into a back bedroom in London NW2? A week earlier, it would have been Elvis. A week later, Ray Charles. But no, Pick of the Pops that week was this “humorous” ditty by an unknown cockney actor called Mike Sarne, accompanied by a young Wendy Richard who was already sounding as stroppy and miserable as Pauline Fowler. It isn’t a “classic”, it isn’t “timeless”, it’s dreadful. But Mike and Wendy evoke the time and place of my birth perfectly – in a way neither Elvis or Ray Charles ever could. And isn’t that what a birthday record should do?