Sailor seemed like a homegrown version of Sparks when they steered into the spotlight at the end of 1975 with Glass Of Champagne, led by a real Russian prince.

Georg Tjegodiev, the group’s singer, leader and founder was born and raised in Norway. He’s the son of Prince Pavel Tjegodiev of Russia and a famous Finnish-French sculptress called Johanna Kajanus (whose own father was Robert Kajanus, the Finnish composer and conductor).

At the age of 12 Georg moved to Paris to study music and classical guitar, and studied at a flying school before the family relocated to Montreal where he worked as a stained-glass window designer and began playing acoustic folk music.

By the late Sixties he was on the folk circuit in England, going by the name Georg Hultgreen and playing an electric 12-string guitar. He formed a band and Joni Mitchell, a fellow folkie on the circuit, suggested the name Eclection.

They broke up after one album and, while two went on to form folk-rockers Fotheringay with Sandy Denny. Georg, who continued his songwriting by penning a tune for Cliff Richard – which earned the rare distinction of being his first flop.

First forming a duo with Phil Pickett, they recording an album together before adding two more musicians, Henry Marsh and Grant Serpell, who went on to become Sailor.

Georg’s original grand plan was a musical theatre production called Red Light Review, based on his memories of being a young man in Paris’s red-light district of Pigalle, but he was encouraged by Serpell to rework the material as pop songs.

Here are Sailor, performing their first hit Glass Of Champagne, featuring Kajanus’s own invention the Nickelodeon, a musical instrument made of pianos, synthesisers and glockenspiels.

And, it seems, a drum on the side. It reached no.2 in December 1975 and remains beloved of Oliver Bennett. And a chap on YouTube who spotted this video and commented memorably: “The guy on drums was my chemistry teacher Mr Serpell….. absolute LEGEND!!!”