Bill Martin

Songwriter BORN NOVEMBER 9, 1938 - DIED MARCH 26, 2020, AGED 81

BILL MARTIN formed a songwriting partnership with Phil Coulter which produced a succession of hits, including the football anthem Back Home.

Sandie Shaw won the Eurovision Song Contest with Puppet On A String in 1967 but the following year Cliff Richard narrowly missed out on the top spot with Congratulations.

The England World Cup team of 1970 put Back Home at the top of the charts but Scottish-born Martin took a lot of flak from his countrymen for selling out to the “auld enemy”.

However in 1974 he wrote Easy Easy for the Scotland football team competing in the World Cup, another hit.

The Martin-Coulter partnership made a fortune for the Bay City Rollers in the 1970s. Shang-A-Lang, just one of many hits, is supposed to have been inspired from sounds made at Glasgow’s Govan shipyards, where Martin had worked as an apprentice.

Elvis Presley reached No.5 in the UK charts with

the ballad My Boy in 1974 but the singer died three years later shortly before they were due to meet.

Cilla Black had a hit with Surround Yourself With Sorrow and with so much money rolling in Martin built up a portfolio of properties.

A winner of five Ivor Novello awards, he was appointed MBE in 2014.

Born William Wylie MacPherson, he grew up in a tenement flat in Govan. His father Ian had a job in accounts but in his spare time he became a piano player, often accompanying his mother Letitia, a talented singer herself.

Leaving school at 15 he worked in the shipyards alongside Billy Connolly but moved to South Africa in 1960 to play football for Johannesburg Rangers.

He had four children, two from each marriage, and is survived by second wife Jan.

Written by KAT HOPPS & JAMES MURRAY