Back to my childhood again for Pickettywitch singing That Same Old Feeling – one of two different versions in the charts.

This was one of the first songs I remember hearing when I was growing up in Germany, probably on Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart’s show Family Favourites on BFBS.

I don’t think I ever knew what Pickettywitch looked like before clicking on this TOTP clip from 1970, so seeing them is new for me too.

The singer is Polly Brown, who came from Birmingham  and (it says here) had another hit four years later with a duo called Sweet Dreams and was briefly successful as a solo artist.

That Same Old Feeling was written by John Macleod and Tony Macaulay, a songwriting duo who had penned hits for The Foundations – the original singers of this – and, most lucratively of all, the Coca-Cola jingle “It’s The Real Thing.”

There was also a version by The Fortunes, which was released in Ameria head-to-head with Pickettywitch and both vied for the highest chart position for several weeks.

Polly Brown briefly hit the news in 1972 when Jimmy Savile claimed he was engaged to her – something she strenuously denied, and later suggested he had invented as a cover for his paedo activities.

She returned to the public eye in 1974 with Sweet Dreams, who had a hit with an ABBA song called Honey Honey, and enjoyed a solo hit the following year with Up In A Puff Of Smoke.

Meanwhile, Pickettywitch carried on with a new singer, Sheila Rossall, until she was diagnosed in 1980 with Total Allergy Syndrome prompting tabloid headlines as “the woman who was allergic to the 20th century.”