I remember I wrote a dreadful New Year song for Jimmy Logan, which was sung at midnight from Westminster Bridge as Big Ben rang out the New Year. I wrote it (I was asked to write it) when I didn't have enough cash to pay for a pound of potatoes and I remembered the words of George Bernard Shaw 'You can't call yourself an artist if your wife and children are starving in an attic'. I got an advance on royalties of £5.00, that was in 1966, in London. I have some sympathy for plastic paddies -- we had our own Plastic Mac, the nickname for Harold McMillan.