Hello, Chris Evans here. Thank you for downloading this special edition of the podcast.

This week we spoke to a man who needs no introduction, but we'll give him one anyway.

Dapper Dave, it's over to you.

He's had his fair share of all right Saturday nights, and he's still standing.

Slat bang in the middle of saying farewell to the Yellow Brick Road and clutching copies of his brilliant autobiography,

me. It's Sir Elton John and Chris in conversation recorded at the Royal Academy

of Music earlier this week. And they start where it all started. Elton, tell us about Miss Dodds.

Miss Dodds was the secretary of the Royal Academy in 1958, or probably before and after it. But when I

came to the Royal Academy in 1958,

she was the secretary.

She was a very Miss Jean Brody kind of character,

but quite tall and terrifying.

And if you had to go and see Miss Dodds,

you just went, oh, no.

We all had a teacher at school that you didn't want to go and see, right?

If you were called before,

Miss Dodds ran this place with an iron fist, and she was brilliant.

But she terrified the life out of me.

And you said you used to come here and smell fear, and now you smell joy because it's changed so much.

Tell us about that.

Well, in 1958, when Elvis Presley had started and rock and roll had come in, and jazz and musical theater were frowned upon obviously big time here it was only classical music that was thought to be music

and of course during the years it's changed and it's changed but it's changed in a brilliant way

...