It’s only listening to this again now, 45 years later, that I realise it’s the best Four Tops song not actually by the Four Tops.

Billy Ocean’s first hit was actually written by him (under his real name, Leslie Sebastian Charles) but owes more than a little to I Can’t Help Myself, which was riding high in the charts at the time, albeit in Donnie Elbert’s cover version.

Nevertheless, it launched Billy on the way to a string of big hits in the mid-Seventies – and an even longer string of even bigger hits in the mid-Eighties including a UK no.1 and three US chart toppers.

He was far from an instant success. This was actually his tenth single.

Billy, whose family had emigrated from Trinidad to Romford when he was ten, was working as a tailor on Savile Row when he wrote it after borrowing £23 from his boss to buy a colleague’s piano.

He installed it in his bedroom in his parents’ flat in Brick Lane and and taught himself to play it. This was one of the first songs he wrote.

He had pretty much given up hope of a successful music career when he finally recorded it a few years later, while working night shifts on the assembly line at Ford Dagenham.

It reached no.2 in March 1976, held off top spot by Brotherhood Of Man’s Eurovision winner Save Your Kisses For Me. Which is a crime.