I’ve got to be honest: I don’t like this song much. It’s so sentimental, so sad and depressing, its melancholy mood reinforced by the church choir and brass band, and Skellern’s voice sounds as if it might crack at any minute. But it was there. It was an unavoidable part of life in 1972.
I always thought of it as synonymous with The North due to Skellern’s ‘northern’ accent (he was born and raised in Bury, Lancs), the brass band (though The Hanwell Band actually come from Ealing) and because I was at school in Yorkshire at the time it came out.
In fact, I now learn, the former church organist and choirmaster actually wrote it in the summerhouse of his home in Shaftesbury, Dorset, where he lived with his wife and two children, while working as a hotel porter nearby. It reached No.3 and sold a staggering 800,000 copies.
The choir on the record is called The Congregation and had already had a hit of their own with Softly Whispering I Love You (I’ll spare you: be grateful).
As a child, Skellern had played the trombone and joined the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain, growing up to become the organist and choirmaster in his local church before attending, and the Guildhall School of Music and graduating with honours.
He then joined a vocal harmony group (March Hare, who changed their name to Harlan County) and recorded a country-pop album with them before disbanding in 1971. This record – his solo debut – was promoted on his Radio 2 show by Terry Wogan, who would later have a brass band hit of his own with The Floral Dance.
Skellern went on to make a series of autobiographical television shows for the BBC and hosted a chat show (Private Lives) before forming a classical-pop fusion group – called Oasis, believe it or not – with Julian Lloyd-Webber, Mary Hopkin and guitarist Billy Lovelady. When that flopped, he teamed up with the ghastly Richard Stilgoe for a two-man review called Who Plays Wins.
He retired in 2001 to join the church, being ordained as a deacon and priest in the Church of England, and devoted himself to writing sacred choral music. He died from a brain tumour in 2017.