Middle-of-the-road cabaret duo Peters & Lee interrupted the all-conquering march of Glam with their sentimental singalong Welcome Home.

Question: which artist(s) became the first after The Beatles to have an album and single simultaneously at No.1 in the charts? Not the Stones or Kinks, not Slade or T. Rex, not even Elvis…

This is here not because it’s a favourite of mine but because it was such an anomaly at the height of Glam Rock: a middle-of-the-road cabaret act whose appeal could be summed up as the blind leading the blonde. Its success, however, came from television, when Peters & Lee won Opportunity Knocks a record seven times.

Their sentimental singalong Welcome Home was as bland as they were blind and blonde respectively but it struck a chord with the British public, selling 800,000 copies.

Lennie Sargent grew up in Islington, the son of a local fishmonger, and had the great misfortune to lose the sight in both eyes in two tragic incidents. When he was five he was blinded in his left when he was hit by a car and then, when he was 16, he lost the other when he was sunbathing in Hampstead and told some youths to stop throwing stones. When he lay back down, one of them threw a brick at his head, blinding him in his right eye.

His close-knit family clubbed together to buy the boy a stand-up piano and he began to perform in local pubs, playing the piano and singing in the late Fifties and early Sixties. He even earned a record deal and had a few flop singles in the early Sixties, forming a band that sometimes featured his nephew on the drums – a young lad called Charlie Watts. Yes, that Charlie Watts.

He had a spell in a band called the Migil Five, arguably the first white band to play bluebeat and ska – a kind of early version of Madness – before meeting dancer Di Lee from Sheffield on the northern club circuit and tempting her down to London in pursuit of her dream of becoming a ballet dancer.

Forming a double act, they made their debut in 1970 with (ahem…) Rolf Harris but it was Opportunity Knocks that gave them their big break. After this they became a fixture on TV shows, including The Royal Variety Performance, The Golden Shot, Des O’Connor and Mike and Bernie Winters shows, throughout the Seventies.

In a bizarre footnote, I now find that Lennie had the sight in his right eye restored after two operations following the assault but the night before he was due to be discharged he saw the patient in the next hospital bed about to fall on to the floor and dashed over to help him back up again. The strain detached his retina and he never saw again.