Little Does She Know was released as a single and entered the charts 'with a bow and arrow' the day we played Bristol Colston Hall on our Works Outing tour. It was certainly a thrill to hear ourselves on Radio One three times a day and we were soon on Top Of The Pops. Despite our hit, all was not well within the ranks. In the studio Graeme clashed with Mike Batt, protesting that Mike was over-commercialising the group, although this is precisely what most of us wanted. (Graeme now confesses that he thinks Batt's arrangements were brilliant).
Graeme quit and turned up a few weeks later as a member of Eddie And The Hot Rods, for whom he composed their terrific hit, Do Anything You Wanna Do. Barry Martin, a lanky chap of great guitar dexterity and these days in the Hamsters, replaced Graeme in the Kursaals and we flew all over Europe promoting our hit but the magic was starting to wane.
The combined effect of our failure to follow up and the commercial onset of punk panicked the group and people quit in droves. Our manager was offered a job at Stiff Records, which he wisely accepted; Vic Collins, whose pedal steel guitar had been mothballed in the frenetic new musical climate, also left (to be replaced by John Wicks) and sundry roadies and tour managers sought employment elsewhere.
A live LP, Five Live Kursaals, was released by CBS and in the autumn of 1977 we toured the UK with punk group The Cortinas in support. Every show climaxed with Paul demolishing a TV set with an axe, but half way through the tour Paul decided he had had enough of the Carl Wayne impersonations and announced that he would be going solo. The rest of us considered our options for about five minutes and promptly disbanded.
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