This interview was conducted in Birmingham on Saturday 28th May 2000 after David came off stage with Bucks Fizz at the Birmingham Gay Pride Celebrations. I would like to say a big thank you to David for agreeing to do this interview and for answering all my questions.

The main question I get asked by visitors to the website is why hasn't 'The Dollar Album' and 'The Paris Collection' been released on CD yet, and will they ever be released?

"I believe 'The Paris Collection' and 'The Dollar Album' has never been released on CD because WEA records (Warner Bros Inc) have chosen not to do it, and I guess you'd really have to ask them why they haven't released them. We're not involved with that record company anymore, they own the rights to those later hits and that's all the light I can shed on it at the moment. It maybe they are saving them for something special later, we're coming up to twenty years since those hits 'Hand Held In Black And White' was 1981."

Do you still keep in touch with Thereza, and if so when was the last time you spoke to her?

"Yes I do keep in touch with Thereza, I last spoke to her at the end of February/March we have just leased the rights to our early hits to a company called Trojan. We had to discuss how much we were going to do it for, all the contract details etc. She's in Sydney and seems to be reasonably happy there. I don't know if there's going to be a question later about doing gigs but if there is she's up for it, I'm up for it, we would do it together as the original Dollar duo. And it's possible somewhere in the next few years if one of the promoters would approach us amongst an eighties package she may come over on a working holiday."

So there is a chance of a Dollar reunion sometime in the future?

"Yes it's possible, it's always possible. Every time I say never again something happens. So to be honest if the right situation was to arrive I don't have a problem with it, and I know Thereza doesn't, it's just a matter of the right situation. It's a lot of investment because Thereza has got to get over here from Australia, we've got to rehearse a band, it's not an inexpensive thing to do. We're not going to go and do holiday camps that's for sure even though I do them with Bucks Fizz and Mike, that's more our market, but not for Dollar we wouldn't do that."

What happened to the album Dollar were planning to release after the success of 'O L'Amour', and are there any tracks you recorded for it that were never released?

"We had an enormous hit with 'O L'Amour' which was good and then some marketing things changed at London records. The next record came out (It's Natures Way) and it wasn't a hit so we walked out on the London contract, then we went our separate ways anyway so there was nothing left to pick up. There are tracks that were never released somewhere in the archives, I can't remember the titles off hand. There's not an awful lot and they wouldn't be any good today."

Do you have a favourite Dollar single or album track?

"Well 'Shooting Star' I guess because it was our first hit, that's always very special. I like 'O L'Amour' and 'Give Me Back My Heart', and I also like 'Love's Gotta Hold On Me' because we wrote it."

When you were writing songs with Thereza, who wrote the music and who wrote the lyrics?

"Collaborations of the both really, I mean sometimes I didn't write some of the songs sometimes she didn't write the songs but they put both our names on them. And sometimes we were together in the same room when we wrote them, and generally that's what happened."

I was reading an old interview with you from the early eighties where you mentioned you were about to shoot a video for 'Hand held In Black And White', did you actually record a video for it?

"We actually didn't record a whole video for 'Hand Held In Black And White'. We did do a commercial for 'The Dollar Album' and we added some video footage to 'Hand Held In Black And White' for a thirty second video to use as a commercial to sell the record, and we also did a bit for 'Videotheque'. Somewhere, I think I may even have it myself at home is a copy of that video which no one has ever seen."

Did you also record a full video for 'Give Me Some Kinda Magic' or just the short clip that was shown in 'The Dollar Album' commercial?

"No we never did one for that either. 'Videotheque', 'Give Me Some Kinda Magic' and 'Hand Held In Black And White', all of those were incorporated in a TV commercial."

Do you have a favourite period from your time in Dollar that stands out more than the rest?

"I think probably the 1981 and 82 era was probably the peak period for Dollar so I guess that period is one of my favourites, it's the most successful period. The early days of Dollar were great, they were good fun."

Was it a hard decision leaving a successful group like Guys 'n' Dolls not knowing if you'd find the same amount of success again with a new project, or was it an easy decision to make?

"We didn't leave Guys 'n' Dolls we were fired, in fact Thereza got fired and so they fired me as well because we were living together. We got fired because we were travelling round these cabaret clubs all around England, Leicester Baileys places like that. And although we'd had a couple of big hits with Guys 'n' Dolls it was sort of over in a way, the recording certainly wasn't going the way we wanted to go musically and I decided to leave. I had planned recording a record called 'Shooting Star' with David Courtney who wrote it, who also wrote the early Leo Sayer hits. And that was going to be a solo record for me but when the rest of them got wind that I was leaving the group they didn't want to have another boy back in the group because the money was drying up and things like that, and they didn't need six people on the road so they went down to a 4 piece. Rather than replace another boy it would have been odd to have three girls and two boys so they got rid of Thereza. I remember going to the management saying I don't mind going, I haven't got a problem with it, but can't you keep Thereza. They said no, so I said we'd become a duo then to help her, and that's why the first couple of records we made she's only just about on because they weren't written for her. Anyway as it happens it worked really well it was a very famous duo."

Why do you think 'The Paris Collection' failed to equal the success of 'Shooting Stars' and 'The Dollar Album?

"I don't think "The Paris Collection' was as good as 'Shooting Stars' or 'The Dollar Album'. It was very early days for us to take a big project on like that. I think on the production side we did our best but we didn't pull it off, but there's a lot of us in 'The Paris Collection', it's more Thereza and I, the rest is other people producing us. We were getting there 'O L'Amour' we produced so we can produce hits and we can write them. I think it was probably a bit ambitious and in fact we only took that project on because Chris Neil who produced Sheena Easton was getting too busy with Sheena so we left him. We wanted Trevor Horn to do it straight away, he should have done 'The Paris Collection' but he joined Yes so he couldn't do it, so we did it ourselves. You learn a lot but it was probably a mistake."

Looking back do you regret Dollar splitting up in 1982 after your most successful year in the charts?

"Probably do regret Dollar splitting up in 1982. Today groups don't split up they just do solo projects and never announce that they've split when they have, and that would have been better. In fact it was Thereza's fault we split up in some ways because I wanted to do a solo project and I was offered it by Warner Bros, and she said she wouldn't agree to that. She said no he either works with me exclusively or he works on his own. So that was it, that was the end."

If Dollar had carried on then would you have used Trevor Horn on the follow up album?

"I would expect so."

Is it true the demos 'Listen To Me Girl' and 'Never Needed Anyone' secured the deal with Acrobat records?

"God how have you got 'Listen To Me Girl' and 'Never Needed Anyone', how did you know about these tracks? God they're very early tracks, very naive. We had done them but I don't think they secured a deal, they weren't good enough. 'I Need Your Love' and 'Love's Gotta Hold On Me' were written by us and 'Love's Gotta Hold On Me' was a particularly elaborate demo, which was ten minutes longer and thirteen feet fatter in the sound and everything. It was very good but it was cut up and commercialised. 'Love's Gotta Hold On Me' was based on 'How Deep Is Your Love' and 'I Need Your Love' was based on 'When I Need You' by Leo Sayer, and if you listen to the two they are very similar. We were very good at copying people."

The original demo of 'Love's Gotta Hold On Me' featured you on lead vocals, but the finished version featured Thereza. Was it a tough decision picking who would sing the lead on this track after having two hit singles with you on lead vocals?

"It was a tough decision, it was written for me, I wrote it, but it didn't suit me particularly that well. It suited Thereza and Christopher Neil wanted it, and in particular the managing director of Acrobat records wanted it, and that was it, decided. It was a good decision, she went top 5 and sold a lot of records."

How did you feel when the group Orbital sampled 'O L'Amour' on their track 'Style'?

"Well, you gotta remember originally that we stole 'O L'Amour' from Erasure so I don't think we can knock Orbital, it was OK. We covered it from Erasure, had a hit with it, Erasure didn't, so I've got no problem with Orbital. And anything that can make people more aware of Dollar in these days is all the better really."

Which countries did Dollar have the most success in?

"Most of our hits were in the UK, those records were selling a quarter of a million each in those days whether they were big hits or not. We sold over a quarter of a million copies of 'Shooting Star' and it only went to 14. If I did that today I'd be number one for six weeks. We also had hits in France which was very unusual, we had quite a few hits over there, plus Germany and most of Europe. We went to Japan twice, we were just about to break big there when we split up which was silly, but that happens."

You have been in the press a lot lately with your new business ventures, do you have long term plans to stay in Bucks Fizz?

"It's too early to say really on that question. Mike's very relaxed about working he loves working but he's not desperate to work, the girls need to make a living, I need to make a living. I've just taken on someone in my burger bar so I'm hardly ever there now, but I actually enjoy going down there and for the record you know I didn't have to do it, I chose to do it. Nothing has changed from the Bucks Fizz situation, we're still doing gigs I just added the burger bar to my portfolio. I also booked The Three Degrees, Nicki French, The Brotherhood Of Man and Sinitta all last week into a club in London as an agent. I've got other business activities as well that I do so I've got no problem with it at all. Esther Rantzen had me on recently, I did the Edwina Curry show the other day, I've got my own slot on southern counties radio, ten minutes on a Wednesday morning twenty to eight.

So to be honest I can see why somebody only read the headline, saw me serving burgers with onions and all that bullshit and thought what a shame, what a comedown. And I guess it is a comedown from what I used to do but I haven't done what I used to do for twenty years so there's a big difference. And you know, I'm not Michael Caine, I didn't win two Oscars, we just had a few hits and I don't see the big deal about it. I tell you what, I'd rather be doing this some days than working for peanuts like some groups have to do to go and get a living, I wouldn't do that. That's why Mike and I don't do as much work this year like a lot of the other cabaret groups of the seventies and eighties because we won't work for peanuts and we're not desperate to do it, and we're certainly not stage struck. I enjoy my work I enjoy getting on stage, but I'm not gonna hack around thinking that's the only thing I can do, there's a lot more things I can do. I may even produce a few people or even write for them or manage them. But I'm not desperate to do that either, I'm not desperate to do Bucks Fizz, I'm not even desperate to do Dollar. I just do things that come along, we're not in the premier division of pop music anymore.

Boy George did his programme on TV the other day about the eighties and he included us so he must have thought we were important. Trevor Horn I know, two of his favourite records are 'Give Me Back My Heart' and 'Mirror Mirror', and he's produced heaps of hits for fabulous artists. And you've got to remember I've been having hits on and off since 1975, and considering I was just an actor before at stage school and music was certainly not my first love. I enjoy singing, I'm always singing around the house but it's not my first love. I'm much more of a performer and an actor than I am at making records. I think if I'd been say a musician then we would have produced even better records and I may have stayed in it, but I'm not, it's not my first love."