I’ve had an interest for writing factual stuff since leaving school. In the mid-ninties I got involved with the monthly-issued Record Collector magazine which, then, had a regular feature called Under the Covers. It was written by John Reid which focused on the original versions of then-current chart hits. During a conversation with John, he learned of my passion for original versions of songs and invited me to present some material for him to elaborate on. After a few months, he contacted me to write my own entries which I happily accepted and we became joint authors. The following year, John told me he was moving on and asked if I wanted to solely carry on which I did for about 18 months.

Having begun in 2000 assisting the writers and editorial associate at the Guinness Book of Hit Singles, once the company decided they could do a better job without mssers Jo and Tim Rice and Paul Gambaccini, the book nosed-dived and the next edition was full of errors.

The original editorial associate approached me to write an accurate rival book which I accepted alongside my co-author Neil Warwick. Three editions of The Complete Book of the British Chart, which included singles, EPs and albums, were published all to a successful degree.

On the back of that, in 2004, I approached the publishers, Omnibus Press, about writing The 1000 UK Number One Hits book as we were fast approaching the 1000th number one hit. They accepted and I brought in Merseyside journalist and broadcaster Spencer Leigh and the book was published the week after the 1000th number one in February 2005. There are now plans in place to update this to 1500 UK number ones, but we are a little way off that yet.