Showaddywaddy have got their 17th hit in a row: The Unsung Heroes of Rock - by Nina Myskow

They've done it again. Sweet Little Rock 'n' Roller makes Showaddywaddy's seventeenth consecutive hit in five years. They are the unsung heroes of British rock music with a string of hits as longs as their name. It's fashionable to knock them. Trendies who don't do that just ignore them.
But the eight-man group can afford to laugh at them - all the way to the bank. Their fifties-style music on the Arista label has made them a fortune.
Lead singer Dave Bartram lives in a £100,000 split-level luxury home in the lush Leicestershire countryside. He drives a Jaguar XJS and is thinking of driving a Porsche. Last year he holidayed on the Indonesian island of Bali.

What does he think of the group's critics?
"People knock us for things we are not trying to do. They say we are not musical and we get idiots like Johnny Rotten spouting a load of rubbish abput us on dreadful shows like Juke Box Jury.
I'll go into the studios tomorrow and produce a great album - if you give me three months and a load of pie-in-the-sky publicity when it comes out. Anyone can do that. Anyone. But not everyone can entertain people from the age of four to 80 like we do.
That's what we're about - fun and entertainment. The fact we have had so many hit singles is a bonus".

The group have achieved something of a first - not even equalled by Elton John's much-praised Russian tour. They have appeared live on Soviet television, doing a 50-minute show for 350 million viewers which was beamed to all communist countries - including Cuba.

Bartram, 26, and possibly the best-looking singer in Britain today, is the odd man out in the group, something of a loner. He has a very different lifestyle from the others.
"I'm not so much as a settled family-man", he said. "I suppose I've had more women than I can remember. How many? Well, it would run into four figures....
"But now I've quietened down a lot."

Now he says he likes the peace and solitude of his new home. It has a snooker room, four bedrooms, three bathrooms and the grounds look like the botanical gardens at Kew.
All it lacks is a wife. But he is not short of female company. His latest lover is a dancer, but because of their seperate careers they rarely see each other.

Bartram revealed that the group had seriously considered becoming tax-exiles.
"But last week, we decided to pay-up and stay in Britain," he told me. "I would have hated to leave. Thank goodness that's all changed now".

What does the future hold for Bartram?
"It's a challenge for us to stick together and keep producing the hits. But there's one thing I would love to do - try my hand at acting in films. But how do you start? If it came to a choice between the group and a career in films, I would have no hesitation. If I thought it was right, I would follow the star."