Women have said “Sexist, sexist” when I sing “On Again, On Again”, but it just so happened that I chose a woman to demonstrate the point I wanted to make.He appeared at the London Palladium and on a Royal Variety Performance, but he was particularly uncomfortable with such prestigious appearances. He was staunchly left-wing and he could never appreciate why people should spend their earnings on hearing him play. This came to a head with a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in 1971. There was a full audience, but, backstage, he felt he had no right to entertain them.

Norman Newell persuaded him to perform and the resulting album, Live Performance!, is his best.Thackray wrote many intriguing songs, such as “The Gypsy”, “The Widow of Bridlington” and “Bantam Cock” and the author Laurie Lee allowed him to write a song around his book Cider With Rosie. They are excellent comedy songs but they are also full of savage satire: I think it is best to take the piss out of things and then when they are laughing, lob in a hand grenade Much as I would like, I can’t write a straight love song. There are always twists and turns but I feel any song about love should cover the ironic side of it. My favourite writer is Randy Newman and I only wish I could write like that bugger.In the 1980s, although he had moved to Monmouth, he wrote an amusing column for the Yorkshire Post, one being a wicked parody of the family newsletters which often accompany Christmas cards; he described how the whole family had been in and out of trouble with the law. In another, he told how his own children had begged him to write true children’s songs: Most children’s songs are not meant to amuse sensible small people but to satisfy silly big people. My children would rather I taught them swear words than songs.This led to songs like “Little Crunchy Pies”.A recent Radio 2 programme highlighted his work but claimed he was a recluse.

He had become disaffected with performing but he was likely to return. He worked with his great friend Harvey Andrews, who described their relationship in his song, “Me and Jake”: He came round to our house and he got slaughtered on half a bottle of whisky – I had the other half, but it’s very flattering to have a song written about you, especially from a super singer like Harv the Marv.It goes: Me and Jake and a bottle of whisky, Wishing that we were French, Living in the artists’ quarters With the fires that drink won’t quench. I could be Brel, he could be Brassens, Life would be so fine, Me and Jake and a bottle of whisky, We’d trade for a bottle of wine.Spencer Leigh. Astute but publicity-shy chairman of the family firm

Pierre Peugeot, industrialist: born Valentigney, France 11 June 1932; chairman, Peugeot 1988-2002; married (two sons, two daughters); died Paris 1 December 2002. You can credit Peugeot with many motoring achievements – big estate cars, hot hatchbacks, thrifty diesels Cars, though, are one thing: seasoning is quite another. And cooks and gourmands everywhere have Peugeot to thank for the invention, in 1842, of the peppermill.
Until then, peppercorns had to be hand-ground, but Peugeot’s patented design cracked the peppercorns before grinding the pieces finely and evenly. The secret lay in the case-hardened steel used, and the mechanism was so reliable that it has remained in production, virtually unchanged, ever since.

This enduring if conservative engineering, in the dawn of French industry, gave the Peugeot clan its great wealth. Pierre Peugeot was just the latest shepherd of it.But, where his ancestors were obsessed by the metallic grind of factory life, Pierre Peugeot rose to become an astute and extraordinarily successful motor-industry tycoon, turning the previously parochial Peugeot into the world’s No 6 car-maker. Moreover, he maintained the company as an entirely French-owned enterprise, and in the process instigated some of the most charismatic and popular family cars ever.In the 15th century, two brothers, Jean-Pierre and Jean-Fr?ric Peugeot, founded a steel mill in Montbeliard. Jean-Fr?ric perfected a way to make cheap but high-quality saws, and the business was soon churning out ironmongery, machine tools, even metal stays and hoops for crinoline skirts, those peppermills, of course, and, eventually, bicycles: its expertise in making metal rods led to the production of bicycle-wheel spokes and, by 1885, complete bikes, and it rapidly became France’s leading manufacturer.In 1891, Armand Peugeot designed a motor car. Some members of the metal-bashing dynasty were sceptical of this 15mph contraption, and it took Armand 14 years to convince them it was a moneyspinner. Only then did they allow him to use their “lion” logo – the trademark the Peugeot family stamped on their kitchen gadgets to denote the quality of their steel.