March 1967.

When you wake up with just the instrumental bit of a song, and you know that you know the song, you just can’t name it. Somewhat annoying.

So, you wait a wee while, hoping the lyrics kick in, and they do, but you still don’t know the name.

Then you find yourself having to google “the boys watch the girls while the girls watch the boys who watch the girls go by” and finally, you have it! Oh, and then you find the most camp video to go with it. Yeah, welcome to my Saturday morning, how are you doing?

This was written by American composer Sydney ‘Sid’ Ramin and first recorded in 1966 by singer, songwriter, dancer and record producer Bob Crewe. Crewe had first heard the tune when it was nothing more than a demo jingle for a Pepsi advert, but he thought it was a perfect example of the ‘groovy state’ of the music of the time. This became his first US top forty hit when it reached number fifteen on the Billboard chart.

The following year Andy Williams recorded his version, with lyrics from Tony Velona, that featured on the 1967 album Born Free. This time the song only reached number thirty-four on the US chart but it also made it into the UK chart, spending six weeks there and peaking at number thirty-three.

Jump forward to 1999, when the song was resurrected for use in a UK TV add campaign for Fiat and proved to be an unexpected hit. It spent a further seven weeks on the UK chart and peaked at number nine, giving Williams his eighth UK number one.