During a glittering career lasting half a century and counting, Mike Batt's talents have earned him collaborations with the likes of Art Garfunkel and Andrew Lloyd Webber, while Paul McCartney hails him as one of our best songwriters. Yet when we meet at an upmarket bar on, fittingly, Wimbledon Common, South-West London, to discuss his brilliant new memoir, he admits candidly: "Other countries know the scope of my work, but in Britain, I'll always be 'The Wombles guy'." Ah yes, the Wombles.
Those loveable pioneers of recycling and sustainability, created by author Elisabeth Beresford in a series of children's novels in the late 1960s. A BBC1 series about them ran for two years from 1973 and its enduring popularity today is largely thanks to the music Batt wrote to accompany the show. Just 23 at the time, Batt wrote, sang and produced four Wombles albums, which spawned four Top 10 singles, including Remember You're A Womble, The Wombling Song and Wombling Merry Christmas.
Today the father-of-four is at peace with the fact those catchy earworms overshadow his impressive canon of work - including a co-writing credit on the song The Phantom of the Opera, and having written Bright Eyes, Garfunkel's hit theme to the animated film of Watership Down, and discovering multi-million-selling stars like Katie Melua and Vanessa-Mae. Looking trim and youthful at 75 over teas in Wimbledon's Hotel du Vin, Batt could probably still fit inside his Orinoco costume, the hapless but well-meaning W.
