Ahh, the days when you could go on Top of the Pops wearing a sweater knitted by your nan with the name of your band on your tummy…

I must admit I know nothing at all about Pilot, except their two hit singles (Magic and this one) but they look like boys you could take home to meet your mum and dad without fear of them causing any trouble.

I certainly didn’t know that two of them used to be in The Bay City Rollers. I didn’t even know they were Scottish. It seems they formed in Edinburgh in 1973 after singer David Paton and keyboard/flute player Billy Lyall left the pre-fame Rollers.

Pilot was completed with drummer Stuart Tosh and, eventually, Ian Bairnson, the session guitarist who had played on their debut album From The Album Of The Same Name, produced by Alan Parsons.

Magic sold more than a million copies in late 1974. January, from their next album Second Flight, was even bigger, topping the chart just one day later than their marketing department surely planned, on 1 February 1975.

Strangely, they had no more Top 30 hits after that and broke up at the end of 1977, when Tosh, Paton and Bairnson rejoined their producer to become The Alan Parsons Project, and Lyall joined Dollar.

Paton and Bairnson would go on to play on Kate Bush’s first four albums (Bairnson plays the guitar solo on Wuthering Heights), before Paton spent the Eighties touring and recording with Elton John, and playing guitar and bass with progsters Rick Wakeman, Camel and Fish.

Tosh also went on to work with Camel, as well as 10cc and Roger Daltrey, while Bairnson recorded with Buck’s Fizz, writing two of their hits, and has played on more than 100 albums by people as diverse as Chris DeBurgh, Neil Diamond and Sting.

Paton and Bairnson later co-wrote two Westlife singles in the early 200s and in 2014 the three surviving members of Pilot – Paton, Bairnson and Tosh – reunited to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their debut album, Lyall having died with AIDS back in 1989.