In 1966 he joined Cambridge Footlights as a performer, writer and occasional music director, where he met future collaborators Julie Covington and Clive James.
Next year he was taken to EMI with Julie Covington to record the most popular number from the 1967 Revue Show: the complex "Duet", which had appeared on his first album.
"[5] In 1970, Atkin, Covington and Dai Davies recorded a series of twelve 15-minute programmes edited by James for London Weekend Television.
[1] When singer Val Doonican recorded a cover version of the song "The Flowers and the Wine", Atkin and James joked that the royalties from that alone exceeded the total from all album sales.
Paradoxically this album resulted in their most successful tour to date, as James joined Atkin on stage for an evening of song, satire and poetry.
James read from his epic poetic satire, The Fate of Felicity Fark in the Land of the Media while Atkin sang songs from the latest release and previous favourites.
A sonnet in French by Gérard de Nerval, "El Desdichado", which begins "Je suis le ténébreux, le veuf" (roughly I am the shadowy man, the widower), inspired two separate lyrics by James, one of which was "The Shadow and the Widower", an interior dialogue reflecting on a failed romance as a man wanders home through a sterile urban landscape.
[13] While James became a well-known television personality and Atkin a radio producer, their music catalogue went out of print until all six original albums were re-released on CD in the 1990s.
Chris Parr of the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh commissioned Atkin to write a musical play for their Festival season in 1977.
The result was A & R, which was substantially re-written for a 1978 production by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Donmar Warehouse in London where it ran for six months in repertory.
His productions included Just a Minute, My Word!, My Music, Week Ending, Legal, Decent, Honest and Truthful (written by Guy Jenkin and Jon Canter, and starring Martin Jarvis), After Henry (by Simon Brett with Prunella Scales, Joan Sanderson, Ben Whitrow, and Gerry Cowper), Second Thoughts, Christopher Lee's The House, Flying The Flag, Peter Tinniswood's Uncle Mort's North Country, Jarvis's Frayn, My Grandfather, Martin Jarvis reading Richmal Crompton's Just William stories, and Yes Minister.
His most notable freelance production is This Sceptred Isle – a 216-part specially commissioned history of Britain, written by historian Christopher Lee and read by Anna Massey, Paul Eddington, Peter Jeffrey, and others (including Atkin himself under a pseudonym), recorded and broadcast over 14 months in 1995 and 1996.
In 2001, 2003 and 2005, Atkin and James undertook national tours of the UK talking about, reading and singing, their songs, poetry and prose.
This revival dates back to 1996 when Steve Birkill, an electronics entrepreneur and satellite television pioneer, approached Atkin at a concert and asked permission to create a website celebrating his work.
In 2002, the electronic music outfit Lemon Jelly used a guitar sample from "The Pearl Driller" (from Driving Through Mythical America album) as part of the "Nice Weather For Ducks".
The Colours Of The Night, a thirteen track album of new songs, released on 6 July 2015 on the Hillside Music label, is said to "mark the final chapter in a songwriting partnership with Australian broadcaster and poet Clive James that has endured for almost fifty years".
On 7 January 2016, Atkin was crossing the road in Bristol when he was hit in the face by a bus, suffering multiple injuries and subsequently losing the sight of one eye.