THE New Seekers found themselves woefully under-sought in Swindon 37 years ago.

“Top of the Flops Shock,” said an Adver headline on the final Friday of April, 1978.

A little less than five years earlier, the easy listening band had topped the charts with You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me.

The track joined a list of New Seekers hits including 1972 Eurovision runner-up Beg, Steal Or Borrow and 1971’s Never Ending Song Of Love.

1971 had also seen the British band score their first number one with I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing, which was adapted from a Coca-Cola commercial.

By 1978, though, the magic seems to have faded.

“Swindon has snubbed a concert by top pop group The New Seekers,” we said, “and that could mean a terrible blow for the town’s handicapped children.

“Only 300 tickets had been sold today from the 1,500 on offer for tomorrow evening’s concert at the Oasis, so the charity organisers face a major cash crisis. The concert was planned to raise more than £3,000 for a minibus for handicapped youngsters.

“But present ticket sales will not even cover the leading pop group’s expenses.

“Swindon Lions, noted for their charity fundraising efforts, are sponsoring the concert, with tickets at £2 and £2.50.”

As a guide to what these sums might represent now, that week in 1978 a shopper could buy half a pound of butter for 24p, a tin of Heinz baked beans for 15p, a monthly car magazine for about 45p and a 10-pack of Bird’s Eye fish fingers for 55p.

Hopes of a last minute surge of New Seekers fans were dashed. After the concert we reported that only about 500 tickets had been sold, against a break-even point of 1,000.

Why were sales so poor when the band’s style of music still had so many followers and its hits were well-remembered?

It seems The New Seekers may have been early victims of what might be called Switched Personnel Syndrome, in which fans are turned off because of radical membership changes. Original members Lyn Paul and Peter Oliver were gone by 1976 and other changes followed. A version of the band, albeit with only one original member, existed as recently as two years ago.

Lyn Paul spoke to the Swindon Advertiser in 2012 when she played the key role of Mrs Johnson in Blood Brothers at the Wyvern. She recalled a whirl of activity which included playing at Richard Nixon’s second White House inauguration in 1972.

“To be perfectly honest,” she said, “it was just a job to us.”