This is the transcript of a radio interview Gilbert did with Erica Hughes on Saga in the UK on the 19th March 2004 on the occasion of the release of his greatest hits album called "The Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan".

As an introduction ERICA played "NOTHING RHYMED" and "MATRIMONY"

ERICA: Saga 106.6 FM on this Friday morning with me Erica Hughes, and sharing our custard creams and a chat this morning is a gentleman who sang that so wonderfully.  I'm delighted to say that we are finally having a chat with Gilbert O'Sullivan.  Good morning Sir!

GILBERT: Good morning Erica, nice to be with you.

ERICA: And you too welcome.  "Nothing Rhymed" that was really the one that hit you to the big time wasn't it in this country?

GILBERT: Yeah that was the first success.

ERICA: Does that seem like a lifetime ago now because you have been creating music for so many years now?

GILBERT: Well only if I think about it.  I tend not to dwell on the past too much but obviously it is a fair amount of years ago.  Looking back it was a great time.  Happy it happened and delighted for the way it went after that.

ERICA: But you've always been very creative and even sometimes when we haven't been hearing from you, you've always been writing still, haven't you?

GILBERT: It's the key to everything I do is the songwriting.  If I wasn't writing songs today I wouldn't be talking to you.  So the key to me at the moment and the future is the fact that I love writing songs.  I like the fact that I can not only write them, but I can record them.  I have control over the writing, I have control over the recording but of course I have no control over if they're going to sell or if they're going to be successful in other parts of the world.  That's something which is not my department.  In a way that's probably a good thing.

ERICA: In terms of the advances, technology has changed so much since obviously the 1970s when you were first on the scene with us.  Do you get a buzz from the technical side of things.  Is that your sort of area?

GILBERT: Not in the sense of songwriting.  Songwriting never changes.  I mean Paul McCartney will probably tell you that all he needs is an acoustic guitar and he's away.  All I need is a piano, a keyboard and a cassette player and I'm away.  the technology is there to be used.  I have a recording studio in Jersey, 48 track digital state of the art and we have to update it every few months.  But that's a different kettle of fish.  That's when you go into making records.  You can't be making records with ancient equipment.  You have to keep up to date but in terms of the writing which is nice for me the fact that nothing changes.  You just need four walls, a ceiling, a keyboard, a cassette player and you're off.

ERICA: Wonderful, you have been quoted as saying that one of your main lyrical influences was Spike Milligan?

GILBERT: Well only in the sense that I've always found musically I've been very influenced by everything I hear from the Beatles through Dylan through Paul Simon you name it, but it was always on a musically level.  Lyrically I don't really have any influences in terms of hard core lyrical influences like a Dylan or a Lennon or McCartney.  I liked their lyrics but they weren't the thing that inspired me lyrically, but Spike Milligan did.  When I was at art school it was the place to read a lot of his poems, those silly poems he used to write.  I started doing that kind of thing, the nonsensical things and I loved the play on words.  I like to be able to use the language, different meanings of the same word.  The joy of songwriting particularly if you are a lyricist is when you spend those weeks where you're sitting with a blank piece of paper and then eventually you get the idea coming is that you get engrossed in it and you can make yourself smile by coming up with a humorous line perhaps even if it's only to please yourself.  So there is a real joy and fun in lyric writing and the nonsensical approach that I think Spike Milligan was brilliant at.  I mean Benny Hill had it to a certain extent.  A sense of humour is important of course to keep yourself sane.

ERICA: Were you the sort of child in school that was into tongue twisters and thing like that?

GILBERT: I wasn't into it all.  I was a pretty normal kid no different to any other.

ERICA: You're a normal adult as well Gilbert!

GILBERT: (Laughs) Creatively I am very independent.  I'm individual and I have my own way of doing things but just to go back to when I was a child.  There was nothing in my childhood which would predispose that I would end up doing what I did.  It was just a normal upbringing.  But with the advent of the Beatles everybody was getting into bands and I was a youngster, started playing the drums in a band and we would do Searchers material and then it develops from an interest to become a sort of part time interest to more serious and then I was at art school.  There's a nice link between art and music.  Ray Davies the Kinks went to art school, John Lennon went to art school.  A lot of musicians went to art school and that was a nice period for me and so the writing became more serious.  That's the time I decided to take it up full time.

ERICA: You're the second eldest of six children, you've got two sisters and three brothers.  Where you in a musical household then?  You were in Waterford originally and then moved to England.

GILBERT: Born in Ireland, proud of my roots, but raised in Swindon and proud of being raised there.  All my musical influences, all my musical tradition is to do with growing up in Swindon and music radio and buying records and living there.

ERICA: It used to be so exciting to go and buy your records didn't it?  Can you remember the first one you bought?

GILBERT: I think it was probably "Apache" by the Shadows might have been the first single I would have bought.

ERICA: At least yours isn't embarrassing.  Most people's is terrible embarrassing when they say that.

GILBERT: Well some people say that the first record they bought was mine and it was embarrassing.

 (BOTH LAUGH)

GILBERT: I think good memories of when you are growing up with records.  In those days all we had were records whereas these days it's mobile phones, DVDs and videos and stuff. the youth market has far more material to play around with for fun and entertainment whereas we just had records.  That was the key to everything we did when we were young.

ERICA: You mentioned that you now live in Jersey.  You've been there for many years.  Is that somewhere that you find a creative place because it also has the impression of being relaxed and easy going laid back.  Is that the reason that you are based there?

GILBERT: No....

ERICA: Apart from tax reasons I presume.

GILBERT: Yeah that played a part.  I moved there after my court case with Gordon Mills had been resolved and settled.  Therefore I had left England before the case started and I came back after I'd won it but I didn't want to come back to Surrey. I liked the idea of going somewhere different.  Our daughter was getting to school age, had two daughters, one of them was just at school age and Jersey's a really nice place to raise children.  It's a healthy place, it's a very small island, only 80,000 population.  Creatively it doesn't matter where I write.  songwriting is something that is in you.  I started writing in a garden shed and in a way the room that I write in now is not that much different.  there's nothing to imply that you've been successful, because it's just a piano, a cassette player and lots of paper.  That's all you need so there's no trimmings of success that you're surrounded by to make you aware of what you've achieved and in a way that's kind of good.  The driving force for me is the attitude I have.  it doesn't matter where I live but having said that Jersey is a really nice place to live, healthy place, nice beaches.  I don't drive, for example when I go home in a couple of days time I could walk home from the airport.  There's not many places that you could do that.

ERICA: Not really no.  That's an interesting thought, you walking home from the airport.  Have your daughters grown up with an interest in music.  Are they pianists?

GILBERT: They're like all young people.  My oldest daughter has done piano, she did violin.  But all children go through that stage of doing that and then of course they drop it and move on to youthful things.  Both of them are into bands, my youngest daughter Tara did the cello as opposed to the violin.  It's a phase they go through.  You wish perhaps that they would take it a little more seriously, but what happens is that they get older, they don't want to practice anymore, so they lose interest.  And of course they both like popular music, they both have their favourite bands.  But I keep them away from my stuff (laughs). they learn more about my music from their cousins and the nephews that they do from me.

ERICA: Wonderful, we know your stuff is very popular both in the UK and very successful in Japan.  Aren't you?

GILBERT: It's a good market for me because you know making albums is an expensive business and I make an album about every eighteen months so the Japanese are very good because of the success there, they help me finance.  I own all my product, I own all the old stuff, I own all the new stuff and I licence it. we have a very good deal now with EMI for a new album and for the 'Best Of'.  So therefore Japan is good for me in that sense.  They release box sets, they do lots of compilations and it's a nice market for me and I'm very grateful.

ERICA: Wonderful, well we will take more in a minute or two but I'd like to play from your recent CD "Piano Foreplay".  I'd like to play a  track from that which was quite a success in Japan wasn't it?

GILBERT: Yeah, "Make My Day" it's been a TV commercial.  Again I get those things in Japan TV commercials and film music, much more that I get in Europe.  so I can't complain.

ERICA: We're definitely not going to complain.  It's a lovely song taken from "Piano Foreplay" this is my guest Gilbert O'Sullivan sharing custard creams and a chat on Saga 106.6 FM and this is "Make My Day".

ERICA played "MAKE MY DAY"

ERICA: "Make My Day" from Gilbert O'Sullivan taken from his recently released "Piano Foreplay".  Can you explain how you got the title for your new greatest hits album "The Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan"?

GILBERT: It's the old cliché, what are you going to call it, the very best of this, the very best of that, the greatest, the all time best.  So for me it was just a bit of fun to come up with something a little original, off the wall.  When you see the cover it makes sense.

ERICA: Well you are slightly off the wall aren't you?  

GILBERT: Am I?

ERICA: When you first came on the scene and you know we all still have this image of you, which was a very strong visual image, the Buster Keaton type of look.

GILBERT: Oh course it was just to be different.  I just wanted to be different.  It's a s simple as that.  I had good songs, people liked my songs in record companies.  Management people liked them.  Nobody liked the way that I looked.  So the more people disliked it, the more I was determined to use it and there is no way I would have achieved success without it.  I wasn't prepared to look normal.  I liked the idea of doing something different.  Right down the line that appeals to me in other areas of the business as well.  You go through life and if you do the same as other people... I don't know, for me I get a real kick out of doing something different.  It doesn't mean that it will necessarily be globally successful but just to achieve something that nobody else has done is a good feather in your cap.  That's why I did it, I wasn't aware, wasn't conscious whether I would alienate an audience which of course I did or whether I would appeal to a certain audience.  Had I realised that wearing a dress and makeup would have helped me more I might have done that.

ERICA: (laughing) Boy Gilbert!  You haven't actually performed live in this country for a couple of years but you have just announced a date in London haven't you?

GILBERT: With an album out every eighteen months to two years I do go on the road but it is not as easy to go on the road in the UK as it used to be.  It's far more difficult.  I get letters from people saying why don't you come up to Scotland?  It's very difficult we try to do a few dates.  We're doing one in London on the 26th of April but I'm afraid the power of being able to appear in a theatre close to you is down to the theatre owners and the promoters in those areas.  If they think that you'll put enough people on seats then they'll book you but if they don't think that you are a big enough draw you are not going to be able to get into that city or town.  So that's really the situation, it's out of my hands again it's a bit like what I don't have control of.  I have control of writing songs, I have control of making records, which I'm very happy to have.  I don't want to have control or say into who it might appeal to as I don't want to have any say into a theatre saying are you good enough to come here or not.  I'd like to be able to play for everybody who wants to see me but it's not something I'm afraid I can do much about.  But we'll see.

ERICA: Well we'll keep our fingers crossed and what I thought was quite interesting when you're doing the London date is that you have another keyboard player with you haven't you?

GILBERT: I tour both ways.  One year I'll take the band on the road, another year I'll do it more intimate, a more one on one because it allows within two and a quarter hours or so that we perform, you get that kind of....it's a very one on one with your audience.  Because it's not all Ooh-Wakka-Doo for two hours.  There's a lot of songs that have an interesting lyrical content, so therefore the bareness of the backing with just the two keyboards and no drums and no bass, no complaints about the loudness of the backing and stuff. It's a kind of an intimacy which makes for a very interesting evening.

ERICA: I love that bit it's not all Ooh-Wakka-Doo (laughing)

GILBERT: Nothing wrong with that but not for two hours!

ERICA: You will of course on the new CD "The Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan" everything from "Nothing Rhymed", "Clair", "Get Down"  there's been so many hits.  As you say people want to hear them but your current stuff is so good.  We were so impressed with the CD when it came in here, the latest CD.  I suppose because you have been so successful with very well know songs it's almost just making people stop and listen to the other tunes as well isn't it?

GILBERT: I hope so.  Obviously you want as many people as possible to like it but you have to accept the way that the business is.  You may never get the success that you had before.  that doesn't mean that you can't.  I have a naive attitude to this business, I have the same attitude now that I had forty years ago, thirty five years ago which is that if I write a song and make a record and it's good and somebody hears it.  They may say "who is that? I like that, I want to investigate, I want to buy that album, I want to but that CD".  So I always have that attitude in my mind when I make a record because I believe on an album that I make of ten or twelve songs of mine, somebody may play a track from it that somebody out there in listener land may hear and say "who's that, I really like that?"  It doesn't have to be somebody who remembers me from way way back, it can just be anybody.  So there's something nice about that.  Something kind of satisfying about that because it has nothing to do with numbers, nothing to do with chart positions, much as you would like to have those things.  It has everything to do with just the power of a record to interest people.

ERICA: Absolutely it's been a delight talking to you this morning Gilbert.  Thank you so much for joining us,  sharing custard creams and a chat with us.

GILBERT: Ginger snaps next time (laughing).

ERICA: I promise you, I promise you I will do that for you next time.  Great to talk to you and all the success to you with "The Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan"  Hopefully we will see you in the East Midland very shortly.

GILBERT: I'd love to.