Most actors learn to sing a bit. When a winning, limelit Desdemona quavers through Shakespeare's Willow Song, or a gym-built hero picks up a lute and bleats out an embarrassing serenade, that's when you see what a gulf there is between real singing and brave, amateur tunefulness.

WE'RE talking 1965, and this is me as a very innocent teenager, being photographed for the music sheet for 'Everyone's Gone to the Moon'. I was in my first year at Trinity College, Cambridge, and some people were wanting to produce a record for me. Suddenly my urgent ambition to become a pop star looked as though it was going to happen.

THEY wouldn't let me in the Top of the Pops studio to watch the programme being made this week: the person dealing with the press never seemed to be available. 'She's on holiday,' I was told, and, strangely, a replacement had not been appointed. What was happening? Were the people at Top of the Pops being obstructive because of newspaper reports like the one in the Guardian which said: 'It is thought likely that the show will be killed off next year'? 'Look,' said the producer Stan Appel, 'we're not facing the axe. It's just a rumour. A rumour started by the press, some of whom don't like us.'