One of the clubs we used to go to was called the Pink Elephant, in St James; Paul McCartney used to go there sometimes too. It was a little downstairs basement that probably held about 80 people maximum, but the stuff that came through there was ridiculous.

I remember one night, I had the organ trio down there. I would only sing about a third of the material during the evening, mainly Mose Allison and blues stuff, and then play some jazz and music for people to dance to. We used to get a lot of people wanting to sit in, particularly singers - and sometimes the singers were terrible!

Somebody brought this guy up and said, “This guy is a phenomenal singer and he wants to have a sing with your band.” I said, “Why don’t you come back in the break when we’ll have time to talk and I’ll check him out?”

So they came back and this guy was from Wales. I said, “What are you doing here, man?” and he said, “I’ve been in London for two years and I haven’t had much luck yet, but I’ve just made a single which is coming out in two weeks. If it doesn’t work, then I’m going back to Wales, because I can make a good living in the working men’s clubs.”

I said to him, “Well, what’s your name, man?” and he said, “Tom Jones.” At the time, a friend of mine, an actor called Albert Finney, had just made this film called ‘Tom Jones’ which was an absolute smash, so I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’d going to have to change his name!’ But he was a really, really nice guy, so I said, “What do you want to sing then?” He says, “Do you know ‘Lucille’?” “Oh, sure.”

So we start the riff, we gave him the microphone, he keyed off - and we were sitting there with our mouths open! “Who is this guy?!” Two weeks later, I heard his single on the radio - it was ‘It’s Not Unusual’, which went straight to No. 1.

About 18 months later, Tom had his own TV show and Julie Driscoll and myself and the Trinity had a No. 1 as well with ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’, so he invited us onto his show. He graciously met us with some champagne flutes in his hand and said, “‘Ello, Bri!” I said, “I see you didn’t go back to the working men’s clubs then?!”