大象传媒

by Bob Stanley of

George Martin's most famous pre-Beatles work was probably with the Goons - that's what the silver-haired gent and the moptops bonded over at the start of their recording career - but his most enduring early hits were with Bernard Cribbins.

Noel Coward praised them at the time, Danny Baker has lauded them since: , and were all hits for the Cribbins/Martin team in 1962. His strike rate was impressive - after Gossip Calypso he released the Mike Sarne-ish The Bird On The Second Floor in 1963 - it flopped, and Bernard retired from the pop fray with his hot streak almost untarnished.

The first two hits were written by the unsung duo of Ted Dicks and Myles Rudge. Dicks also wrote the theme to the children's TV series Catweazle, scripted episodes of Crossroads and was best friends with Len Deighton, who he had met doing national service.

Dicks and Rudge wrote the show And Another Thing in 1960. Featuring Anna Quayle, Lionel and Joyce Blair and Bernard Cribbins it had a lengthy run at the Fortune Theatre, which is where George Martin saw it and decided to record Folk Song, Cribbins' satirical number. It sold well enough for Martin to commission more songs from Dicks and Rudge. Their first effort was Hole in the Ground, with Cribbins as a chirpy workman, wound up by the patronising, bowler-hatted gent telling him how to do his job, who eventually butries the busy-body in the hole. Right Said Fred featured two men shifting a piano, based on the real life experience of Ted Dicks when tried to get a piano delivered to his basement flat in Islington.

The duo's only subsequent hit was the deathless Junior Choice favourite A Windmill in Old Amsterdam for Ronnie Hilton in 1965, but their ballad Other People was the B-side of Matt Monro's hit Born Free which earned them a few bob in 1966. A year later they created a whole album for Kenneth Williams, called On Pleasure Bent, which had a lightly psychedelic purple cover and wasn't as camp as its title suggested. 1967 was also the year Bernard Cribbins had one last bash at the charts, with a cover of .

These days, he is proud of Right Said Fred. "It's become a little classic. It's a real joy," he told the Guardian in 2012. "Long-range applause, I call it."