It was a delight and an utter thrill for all of us to welcome the legendary JONA LEWIE to the Phoenix FM studios!

Christmas time always brings Jona’s music to mind – it wouldn’t be the festive season without hearing Stop The Cavalry many many times. And naturally we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t herd him into our little kitchen for a few photos, in homage to his other big hit from 1980, You’ll Always Find Me In the Kitchen At Parties.

However, not many people know that Jona’s biggest UK hit was actually under the guise of a previous band, Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs, who released “Seaside Shuffle” on the UK label in 1972. The song reached no 2 in the singles charts, narrowly beaten to the top by Alice Cooper’s School’s Out. Since Jona had brought his accordion down rather than a keyboard, this was the one that he played live in the studio for us. You can see this and his chat with Mikey Porter in the video below:

Jona said afterwards that it was the first time he’d played his accordion live on air which we quite frankly find astonishing and may need to fact-check!

There’s a new album out in 2015 and we’re hoping to get him back in to talk about that and play a few more songs, so stay tuned!