Originally a beat group from Manchester, the group were taken under the wing of producer and emerging pop empresario Mickie Most, who moulded them into a pop band of little sexual or intellectual threat, helped by the toothy gauchness of frontman Peter Noone, who resembled a singing Bullwinkle the squirrel.
Of the American market only singles which hit Billboard No. 1 in the Hot 100, Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter (from a British television play) has a period whimsical charm, whilst I'm Henry The Eighth I Am must be one of the oddest chart toppers ever - a beat rendition of an old music hall number.
By 1967, their time had passed in the USA, although hits continued in the UK, including their second-biggest over here, My Sentimental Friend, an elegiac pop number that made it to No. 2 in 1969.
By 1971, Noone had decided to forge a solo career, still under the aegis of Most, and for his first single, it was decided to use a song by a one-hit wonder from south London, which had recently been circulated as a demo.
The one-hit wonder was David Bowie, whose Space Oddity had been a huge hit, but one he'd failed to emulate with subsequent singles. The song, Oh You Pretty Things, was quite different sonically to Bowie's most recent single, the Turgid Holy Holy, being an upbeat number that just happened to retain the apocalyptic lyrical thrust of Bowie's current LP, The Man Who Sold The World.
The sound of Noone breezing his way though Nietzschen lyircs about homosapiens having outgrown their use just doesn't seem appropriate, but the British record buying public disagreed, and took it to No. 12 in the charts - which presumably helped Bowie get his contract with RCA Records in the September of '71.
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