You must understand that this is the equivalent of saying in normal social circles ‘let’s grab a coffee sometime’. We’d actually said this before (many times) but this time we duly got our diaries out and met.... in a café.

Inevitably the question arose, what would we write?

I had a bit of an idea about a Hans Christian Anderson story called ‘ The Little Fir-tree’ and I had started thinking about a song for the main character. David asked me to sing what I’d got; so I did ... in the café. I should perhaps mention that when David is inspired he becomes all animated and quite intense so we both realised we’d outgrown the café within about fifteen minutes of meeting and needed a new date.

We met at his studio and after writing that initial song it was clear we worked well together and complemented each other’s styles and strengths, and we timetabled to write at least once a week until we had completed a new show....