Scot penned a string of hit songs

Glasgow-born Bill Martin MBE was part of one of the most successful creative teams in UK pop history. His work was celebrated by everybody from Elvis Presley to the Eurovision Song Contest.

Mr Martin, who has died at the age of 82, may have grown up in Glasgow’s Govan district – a place better known for shipyards than pop music – but he and Phil Coulter penned a string of songs that earned them global recognition.

The duo joined forces in 1965 and were soon established as prolific chart-toppers, collaborating with such diverse acts as Ken Dodd, Geno Washington, The Troggs, George Harrison, Billy Connolly, Cilla Black, The Foundations, Sandie Shaw and Elvis Presley.

Between 1967 and 1976, they had four UK number ones: Sandie Shaw’s Eurovision-winning Puppet on a String; Congratulations, which came second for Cliff Richard in the contest; Back Home by England’s World Cup squad and Forever and Ever, a hit for shortlived Scottish band Slik.

Mr Martin is the only Scottish songwriter to have penned four

UK number ones for four different acts. There were also numerous top 10 records including the Bay City Rollers’ Shang-A-Lang and Surround Yourself with Sorrow by Cilla Black. In 1975, Martin and Coulter jointly won an Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter of the Year and while critics at the time dismissed much of their output as “bubblegum rock”, their best work has endured for more than 50 years.

The Rollers also topped the US Billboard chart in 1976 with Saturday Night, a song never released as a single in the UK.

There were a brace of other top-selling hits in the States for the pair: Thanks, performed by Bill Anderson, and My Boy, sung by Presley – one of his last successes before his death in 1977.

During the early 70s, Mr Martin bought the former home of John Lennon, by which time they were a powerful partnership in the music industry, had launched publishing firm Martin-Coulter Music, and had signed up other songwriters. He was awarded the Gold Badge Award, for services to the industry, by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in 2009.

Bill Martin, the Scots songwriter who co-wrote the England World Cup song Back Home