Top Of The Pops said we had to mime ...we couldn't stop laughing

IT WAS THE first, and so far the only British chart hit sung in Latin. Steeleye Span's ethereal rendition of Gaudete, a half-forgotten 16th century Christmas carol, soared into the charts in December, 1973, surprising everyone - including the band.

- 

It had flopped the year before, but Chrysalis re-released it. "I don't know why they saw it as a single, we thought it was unlikely to be a hit. The recording engineer hated it," singer Maddy Prior tells me, her smile lighting up like the seaside illuminations in her Blackpool birthplace.

"When we got on Top Of The Pops we couldn't believe our luck. It was the only music show on primetime TV back then.

"We wanted to sing, but they said we had to mime. So we walked about holding candles.

"We were just laughing all the time. We thought it was incredibly funny."

Slade were on the same edition with their own Christmas perennial.

"It was great because it wasn't where we were heading, but it just sort of happened."

The folk-rockers went Top Ten two years later with All Around My Hat - an early 19th Century ditty about a Cockney costermonger whose light-fingered beloved had been transported to Australia.

Then Chrysalis released Hard Times Of Old England.

"They thought it'd be relevant to the times - it's relevant all the time!" says Maddy, 78.

Her voice is so soulful that a New York producer who heard their track asked, "Is that the new Etta James album?" But the only things Steeleye Span took from America were their Fender guitars. Fame came by accident.

"We were always more interested in the music. We wanted it to be popular and not overly esoteric."

Maddy started singing aged nine with the Blackpool Coop Choir. Then the family left Lancashire for St Albans, Hertfordshire. A huge culture shock. "The locals couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand them.

"This was 1959, before Coronation Street, and nobody had heard a Lancashire accent. I had to learn to speak southern."

At 13 she was hanging out at a teenagers' club attached to folk pub The Cock. "I really got into folk and trad jazz - anything you could dance to.