Trevor Horn recalls moment he infuriated comedian Tommy Cooper on John Bishop’s Three Little Words podcast

Record producer and musician Trevor Horn has appeared on the latest episode of John Bishop’s Amazon Prime Podcast. The 73-year-old gained fame in 1979 as a member of the Buggles, who achieved a hit single with ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’.

Speaking on John Bishop’s Three Little Words podcast, which he hosts with Tony Pitts, Trevor revealed how he entered the music industry and became known as "the man who invented the eighties" due to his influence on pop and electronic music in the 1980s. He worked as a producer on successful songs and albums for acts including Dollar, ABC, Malcolm McLaren, Yes, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Trevor said: “I became a professional musician when I was 18, and I earned my living as a bass player till I Was 30, till I first had a hit with Video Killed the Radio star. I was self-taught, but I could read music. Back then, if you could sight read for the bass guitar, you were definitely in the minority because it was such a new instrument. I could do it, so I ended up down here, playing on come dancing and all kinds of things.”

The producer also recalled the time he got on the wrong side of comedy legend Tommy Cooper while playing in a nightclub in his 20s. He said: “Tommy Cooper, I remember very well because Tommy Cooper B*******d me after the first night. I played him on with his theme and then nothing for the next half hour, so I used to have a book and my music stand. I’d sit at the back and read my book all the way through the act. At the end of the first evening, the manager came in and said, ‘Mr Cooper wants you in his dressing room’.

“He lined us up, and he was a huge guy. He had like size 14 shoes. He went down inspecting us and said, ‘If you were working in Las Vegas, it would say in your contract that you had to laugh at every joke’. And he got hold of me and said, ‘That means you’. So he was shouting down in my face. I was like okay, okay, okay. He’d walk on, and he had a tap on a piece of string. He’d jiggle it up and down and go ‘tap dancing’. Immediately he’d look at me, and I’d go, ‘ha, ha, ha’”.

John and Tony invite new celebrity guests onto their podcast every week and have interviewed the likes of Robbie Williams, Tony Bellew, Jimmy Carr and Ian McKellen. They ask their guests to list and discuss three words that mean the most to them.