More than five decades of songs, harmony and stagecraft — still writing together.
From a Northwest club circuit band that once supported Pink Floyd, through chart singles, Royal Command performances and six wins on Opportunity Knocks, to a quiet studio where the songs still get written — this is the long and winding road Norman and Val have travelled together, on stage and off it.
Norman and Val met when Norman's band decided to add girl singers to the line-up. Norman wanted to build a Mamas & Papas–style harmony band — the Pattern People was the result, gigging throughout the Northwest and supporting Pink Floyd at Liverpool Stadium before the band's short life came to an end.
When the Pattern People split, Norman kept writing and booked studio time to record eight tracks. He pitched the songs around London and the duo signed to Feldman's for publishing and recording, with Green Lane Productions managing. Their first single, Riding a Carousel, was released in October 1970, became a turntable hit, and was released in the US too.
It was during this period that Val adopted the stage name Val Movie. Television appearances followed — The Harry Secombe Show, The Jimmy Tarbuck Show, The Benny Hill Show and Top of the Pops. The Scaffold, then riding high with Lily the Pink, brought the duo into their satirical music and comedy revue, touring universities, theatres and the Edinburgh Festival, and culminating in a Royal Command Performance for HM Queen Elizabeth II.
Roger McGough recommended them to playwright John McGrath, who had them write and perform the music for two Liverpool Everyman productions, Soft or a Girl and The Fish in the Sea — both hits, with Soft or a Girl returning for a second season.
As the line-up evolved through the cabaret circuit and a 1974 European tour, the band added a fifth member and were renamed Champagne. Under the Anfield Agency, the classic six-year line-up formed and went on to win Opportunity Knocks six times, appear on The Morecambe and Wise Show, the London Palladium and the Royal Albert Hall, and tour with Mike Yarwood, Ken Dodd and Shirley Bassey.
There were Royal Command performances for Prince Charles, Prince Philip and the Duke of Kent, and tours of South Africa and the Far East in their own right, before Champagne disbanded in 1981.
Norman's songs were recorded and released through the eighties by Clockwork and Simon Alexander, and in the nineties by BND. He went on to manage The Roadside Prophets, staying close to the songs even off the stage.
These days Norman and Val are concentrating on writing and recording — together and independently — from a home studio built on the same instincts that started it all.
Norman and Val's current writing and recordings live on SoundCloud — new tracks are added as they're finished.
Listen on SoundCloud