IN this space last month we ran a picture of Chuck Berry, the rock’n’ roll pioneer, playing Glasgow in 1980. Today’s image dates from 1973, when he arrived at Glasgow Airport to perform at Green’s Playhouse. He happily obliged an autograph hunter (above) but was slightly less forthcoming in front of journalists and photographers, perhaps because his luggage was delayed and his limousine was late.

He had not long topped the UK charts with his innuendo-laden novelty hit, My Ding-A-Ling. To no-one’s great surprise, it had provoked Mary Whitehouse into complaining to the BBC, asking them not to play it, but the Corporation’s then director-general, Charles Curran, disagreed, saying the Beeb “did not think [the song] would disturb or emotionally agitate its listeners”, and wondering, ever so subtly, whether Mrs Whitehouse’s efforts had not, in fact, inadvertently boosted sales of the single.

Berry for his part wearily declined to be photographed with Christmas bell-shaped decorations around his neck (“Listen, man, that’s what they all ask. In a word, ‘No’”) and insisted that he’d been singing My Ding-A-Ling for three years before spending just 20 minutes recording it - “and, wow, it really took off.”

And what about the song’s controversial lyrics? “That tickled me, you know, real featherish,” came the reply. “Your Mrs White Horse ... no, that’s wrong, isn’t it? It’s Whitehouse, like the White House? ... I suppose she’s entitled to say what she thinks.”