Tara Daynes, chorister
I was a pupil at St Winifred’s Roman Catholic primary school in Stockport. The choir had been going about eight years when I auditioned and already had a recording contract. The choir mistress Miss Foley was great. She wore Deirdre Barlow specs and, while she didn’t stand behind us with a pitchfork, she worked us hard and didn’t put up with any messing around. We did a few albums and lots of gigs, then we recorded the single There’s No One Quite Like Grandma. We met the songwriter, Gordon Lorenz, backstage after one of our concerts and then Miss Foley sat us down and told us to learn all the harmonies and such.
We recorded it at Strawberry Studios which was five minutes away. I was 10 but still knee-high to a milk bottle so they stood me at the front next to this little kid who had a good voice but a tendency to throw up – she once barfed on my feet. When we were recording, she fainted and went down like a sack of spuds but a voice came from the control booth going: “Don’t worry, she landed on the carpet so we didn’t hear a thing.”
A bunch of us snuck into the library to hear the chart countdown and cheered when it went in at No 16 in early December 1980. John Lennon’s (Just Like) Starting Over was in the charts at the same time and, when he was shot, Sister Aquinas, the nun who was headmistress, did admit to uncharitably wondering: “What will this do for our sales?” But we had a surge and knocked Lennon off the top. We couldn’t believe it: we were the Christmas No 1.
Top of the Pops made us sing it over and over and the producers kept shouting at us to liven it up a bit and smile. We were always told: “Don’t bother the talent.” So when we did Jim’ll Fix It – two kids wanted him to fix it for them to sing with us – we were kept away from Jimmy Savile. The school put a signed letter from him in a frame on the noticeboard, which years later very swiftly came down. Also at the BBC, I held the door open for Terry Wogan, who swept past with his big cigar. When we did Pebble Mill at One, we met Kojak actor Telly Savalas. I remember he had freckles on his bald head.
I have absolutely no problem with it being in Worst Christmas Songs Ever lists, but even though it’s sort of dreadful there’s an ear-worm quality and it connected because of the family theme. It was in the charts for 11 weeks. We had such a good time and I’ve never lost sight of how lucky we were to do all that.
Peter Tattersall, producer
I founded Strawberry Studios in 1967 and after 10cc came in as investors, we did all their hits including I’m Not in Love, then recorded bands like Buzzcocks and Joy Division. My daughter Paula was in St Winifred’s school choir and I thought they were good so I said to the headmistress: “Why don’t they make an album? You could sell it to parents and make some money for the school.” After one parent sent it to someone they knew at Yorkshire TV, we went on Stars on Sunday and everything rocketed.
I used to get tapes sent into the studio and one of them was the Grandma song. I listened to it, then later that night I couldn’t get the bloody tune out of my head. Gordon Lorenz had written it for the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday in August, but I thought it would be better as a Christmas single and was proved right! We got the choir mistress in and Mike Timoney played a simple backing track on keyboards. The kids were always smart and well behaved. Dawn Ralph was the soloist. She had pigtails, no front teeth, a very cute voice and a very slight lisp. I thought: “She’ll look great on TV.”
Music for Pleasure, our label, didn’t do singles and every other record company turned us down. But MFP’s music director kept playing the song and changed his mind. The 7” flew out of the shops. One day, after Terry Wogan played it on Radio 2, we got a silver disc by lunchtime and by evening it had gone gold.
We won an Ivor Novello for the bestselling single of 1980 and went to the awards. Everybody tittered when they announced that we’d beaten the Police and Barbra Streisand, but we sold just under 1m in the UK and 1.3m worldwide and the kids did things like sing with Abba and meet Margaret Thatcher. The beauty is that all the royalties went to the school and paid for loads of books for the library and new carpets throughout the building. I’m very proud of that.
• Peter Tattersall’s book about Strawberry Studios will be published in 2024.
