Gilbert O’Sullivan was an outlier in the era of Glam. There was no one else remotely like him in the early Seventies.

While Bowie, Bolan, Slade and Sweet piled on the glitter, mascara and feather boas, Gil sat at his piano in a woolly jumper his mum probably knitted for him, embroidered with his initial G.

Or, worse (much worse) his earlier Dickensian-urchin look, with shorts and a cloth cap, a pudding-bowl haircut and a cheeky grin, schoolbie tie skewiff and a big scarf (probably also knitted by his mum).

Then there were those chart-topping piano ballads like the maudlin Clair and the irritatingly jaunty Get Down, whose chorus still comes to my mind 55 years later whenever I hear the phrase spoken; – usually by dog walker, though he apparently wrote it about a girlfriend. Hmmm.

There was also Nothing Rhymed, a undeniably poignant and clever song about starving children in Africa that has been cited as an all-time favourite by John Lennon and Paul Weller and even Bill Matthews.

There’s this one too, and I’m surprised, and hugely impressed, to find Gilbert still singing it, and instantly recognisable to those of us who last saw him on TOTP half a century ago.

Not just singing it, but singing it in tune, and with none of the warbly frailty of other old fellas like Macca and Elton. He’s even got a new album (his 21st) coming out: not bad for a chap who turns 80 on 1 December.