What was the 'breaking wind' incident all about then?
"Well it was nothing really, but the fact that you said it on TV, people were really worried about it. It was a record by Pete Wylie - one of the Wa Hees or the mighty Wah - was it a comeback? I said: "If this doesn’t get to number one I’m going to come and break wind in your kitchen." It’s not kind of a waspish thing, it doesn’t get into books or things or quotations. It’s not a fantastically clever thing to say - but having said it on TOTP. Producer Michael Hurl (who was a bit of an authoritarian figure I always felt - the idea that he was the man who generated a party atmosphere, I don’t remember that at all) was in Australia and apparently he was woken in the Australian equivalent of the Novotel in the middle of the night and alerted to the extraordinary danger to national security that had been engendered by me making this remark about breaking wind in people’s kitchens. I thought that this was hilariously funny - not the remark itself, but the consequences of it."

How did you introduce Big Country?

"I said: "This is the band that put the tree back into country" which is a variant on a well established old joke."

What about when you introduced Keith Harrison and Orville?
"I don't remember that at all... I think that was the kind of smart arse that I was."

And George Cole and Dennis Waterman?

"They wouldn’t let me introduce Dennis Waterman - what was the record they made? I had some kind of hilarious introduction that they didn’t like and word got back to me that they were seriously displeased and steps would be taken if I didn’t amend my introduction and being nothing, if not a coward - I amended my introduction."

What was the best act you remember introducing then?
"Do you remember Curtis Heyston - One Hit Wonder - I don’t know what his hit was called. He was a kind of 18-year-old black lad from Detroit or something. It just suddenly hit me that this was the only thing that’s going to happen to him in all of his life. I hoped it was going to be the start of a string of hits. But he was never heard of again."

What was special about the era for you?

"Well nothing, really, except for the fact that we were asked to do TOTP. Actually we did do it more than anybody else at that time. It was a funny sort of experience because people would recognise you afterwards but only for about two days and then you would slip back into oblivion again. I like oblivion - that’s where I’ve spent most of my life. But then what did it do for me? Kid took the Capital Radio dollar - millions of dollars - and disappeared from Radio 1. So they obviously said "You can’t deal with him anymore". A bloke came up to me - I’d been to the stock car racing at Ipswich and this bloke came up to me and said slightly drunk, "Are you the bloke off the telly?". And I thought "No, I’m not really, I’m their dad!" the idea of being the 'bloke off the telly' was most unattractive. So I just said I didn’t want to do it anymore."