St. Cecelia were one hit wonders, and that hit was "Leap Up And Down (Wave Your Knickers In The Air)" in June 1971. Written by bass player Keith Hancock, inspiration for the song came during a holiday on the East coast with singer Les Smith. Keith: "We rented cottage in Norfolk where we met some French girls and during the time we spent with them the phrase ‘Leap up and down, wave your knickers in the air’ came into my head. Maybe I was being optimistic! But for some reason it stayed in the recesses of my mind”.

A week later I phoned Ricky Moss and told him I was going to write a hit record called Leap Up And Down. He started laughing. Two hours later I phoned to tell him I’d done it. Later in the week I played it to the rest of the band and they thought it was OK - so we started featuring it in our stage act.

The song went down so well with the fans that we booked time at Derek Tompkins’ Beck studio in Wellingborough to record a demo of it. The recording session went smoothly and we emerged with a product I felt sure some enterprising record company would be certain to take. We had a lovely raucous, ballsy, brass sound on it and what I thought was a great bass line.

Our manager sent the demo to several companies but they all seemed reluctant to take it on due to its lyrical content.” John Proctor: “Wherever we played the song, people asked if it was available on disc. Eventually we started selling individually cut acetates for £1.50 a time - a huge amount of money, in 1971, when a 7” single cost only 35p.

This fact alone convinced us that, if we could get a record deal, the song would sell. In due course Jonathan King heard the song and recognised the humour in it. King decided he could make it into a hit record and arranged a recording session for us at the Marquee Martin Studios in Wardour Street, London. We re-recorded the song along with an absolutely dire ‘B’ side called How You Gonna Tell Me - which King provided. This ensured that if the record was a hit, he would reap equal royalties! King also informed us that he didn’t like the bass line, insisting that it was too similar to the Beatles’ Ob La Di. We didn't agree but he changed it all the same and as a result, in our opinion, all the guts were taken out of the recording. It changed the sound totally.

As soon as the recording was done we had to rush off to the South coast for a booking later that night - which meant that we had nothing to do with the final mixing. Jonathan secured a deal with Polydor Records and three weeks later we were summoned to their offices to hear the finished product. We were distraught. It sounded awful when compared to the original demo but there was nothing any of us could do about it.

Fortunately and despite our reservations, the record was a success and spent seventeen weeks in the charts that summer - peaking at number 12.