I love country music, especially old-time roots music with one foot in folk and one foot in the blues, and one hand dangling loosely in the waters of jazz. Now… 

Back in the Seventies I positively loathed “country-and-western” with its big hats, cheap rhinestones, bouffant hair. It would take the best part of a decade to discover Hank Williams and Jimmy Rodgers, Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline.

The only songs that seemed to be hits here were sentimental dirges like Paper Roses or comedy crap like Convoy. And this.

No Charge was a thoroughly emetic US chart topper for Melba Montgomery. Over here the guilty party was J.J.Barrie, a former comedian from Canada who had once managed Blue Mink.

Weirdly, he went on to record a pair of duets with Brian Clough in the early Eighties (You Can’t Win ‘Em All and It’s Only A Game) which I’m sure are in the collection of Dave Whyte.

Despite obviously being unlistenable, No Charge has one thing going for it: it’s written by Harlan Howard, the legendary songwriter who coined the definition of country music as “Three chords and the truth.”

Actually it has another: the drummer is session man Clem Cattini, who comes from Stoke Newington (like me), and was in Johnny Kidd & The Pirates and The Tornados (unlike me), making this one of his incredible record of nearly 50 number one hits with artists as diverse as Cliff Richard, Lou Reed and erm, Rolf Harris.

Having played alongside John Paul Jones on Donovan’s hit single Hurdy Gurdy Man, Clem was also on Jimmy Page’s shortlist of drummers when forming Led Zeppelin, but lost out to John Bonham.

I think he would have found this job a little less strenuous, judging by his record as the go-to guy for novelty chart toppers for Rolf, Ken Dodd, Clive Dunn, Benny Hill, Windsor Davies and Don Estelle, and Renée and Renato.