Many famous names were involved, including: Alvin Stardust, Eddy Grant, Herb Alpert, Graham Nash, Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tom Jones, Neil Sedaka, Donovan, Mike Stoller, Bruce Welch, Duane Eddy, Bill Medley, Roy Wood, Mike Berry, David Crosby and many more.
In 1987, the then producer Stuart Hobday re-discovered Simon Dee, the first voice heard on Radio Caroline in 1964, and persuaded him to present a listeners' all-time-favourite Top 20 which was broadcast on Boxing Day 1987.
The response from the public was so great that Dee was initially asked to host the show as a guest presenter, before being booked for a four-month run from April until July 1988.
Dee's constant demands for the show to be broadcast live and to move from Bristol to London, along with a growing list of complaints to BBC management, meant that his contract was not renewed.
Matthew returned on 10 February 2007, revealing that his prolonged absence had been due to a viral infection contracted while in hospital for a routine operation.
In it, he selected ten of his favourite songs of the 1960s and there were tributes from Ray Davies, Helen Shapiro, Paul Jones, Marty Wilde and Petula Clark.
[2] Matthew made the programme very much his own and turned it into something of a cult, one aspect being its very own slang: "SOTS" (acronym of the title); "avids" (listeners); "the Vocalist" (the show's producer, Roger Bowman and, later, Phil Swern, the Collector).
New features of the show have included "America's Top 3", "Magic Moments", "60s into the 70s", the "A-Z of Motown", "Tony's Doo-Wop Shop", "Northern Soul Dancefloor Fillers", "Stuck on Two", "Classic EPs" and "Phil Swern's Colossal Collection".
Sounds of the Sixties[3] was first broadcast on BBC2 on 5 October 1991, with an episode called "The First Steps", which featured performances from acts such as The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Rolling Stones, along with puppets Pinky & Perky doing the Twist.
All these four series have been repeated many times on BBC Four, with the programmes also being used by UKTV's Yesterday channel as part of their Saturday night music programming block.