EMI were ruled out early on. Sandy Bright remembers that ‘somebody there asked would I not like to go solo, cos I had a very loud voice and would I not like to be the next Cilla Black? I said you've got to be joking!’ Island Records, for all its hip prestige, was likewise dismissed. In Frank and Clive's view, this had become a two-horse race between Virgin and Warner Brothers. In more personal terms, it was a choice between two men, Richard Branson and Derek Taylor.

Both suitors had formidable reputations. Virgin's founder was just becoming known to mainstream Britain as the brash, bearded hippy capitalist who turned business conventions upside down. Warners’ man was the pop world's equivalent of an old-fashioned gentleman, the diplomatic and softly spoken Northerner who had handled the Beatles’ PR through the best and the worst of times. It seemed a case of unstoppable ambition versus cultivated charm.

According to their tyro manager, Frank Silver: ‘We were young, I was 21, completely naive, but I played poker and was good at keeping a straight face. I trotted round record companies, with Clive and Steve if there were artistic discussions but usually on my own for the business ones. It basically turned into a bidding war between Virgin and Warners and it just became a job of trying to up the ante.’

In 1975 Rob Dickins was the young MD of Warner Brothers’ UK publishing company. Like a lot of people, his eye was caught by Deaf School's Melody Maker coverage: