WAKING up one day to discover the "not particularly well written" song you wrote eight years ago has become a worldwide smash hit must be pretty disconcerting.

When people are referring to the song 30 years on as if it's the only thing you've ever done, that phenomenal success can seem like a double-edged sword.

"It's a bit of a monster, because if you have a song as big as that it tends to obliterate everything else," says Ralph McTell, the veteran singer-songwriter whose Streets of London became the surprise hit of the season in Christmas 1974.

"I can't think of a song in the last 30 years that has been like this. I've just been going through my e-mails, and a lot of them are from people all over the world who have just discovered the song for the first time.

"The only trouble is, the fact I've made a further 20 albums since that one gets ignored, and every time I bring out a new one, it just reminds radio stations to play Streets of London again."

Ralph began writing the song when he was in his 20s and busking in Paris.

"Lots of down-and-outs in Paris sleep over the hot air grates in the street. I was pretty poor myself, but I'd chosen that lifestyle myself and knew I would eventually move away from it.

"I was feeling very compassionate towards these poor fellows and wrote a song about them, but then changed the setting to London. I started the song in 1966 but didn't finish it until the following year and recorded it in 1969.

"It was just another song to me. I don't think it's a particularly well-constructed song, but it seems to have touched a nerve about alienation and the fear of loneliness."

The song, with its instantly familiar chorus ("So how can you tell me you're lonely, And say for you that the sun don't shine?" etc), got to number two in the UK. At one time in Germany, there were four different versions of it in the charts.

McTell, not your average attention-seeking popster, found the attention too much and beat a hasty retreat to the States, where he spent a year writing songs in happy anonymity.

This year McTell celebrates two milestones - his 60th birthday and his 40th year on the road.

On November 26 he will be marking his birthday with a musical bash at The Royal Festival Hall, but in the meantime he's got a UK tour to think about.

"I absolutely love performing live. I did my first professional gig when I was 20 and I've toured almost every year since then. I used to do 40 or 50 dates a time, but I don't do that any more."

McTell started off in a band, but the omens weren't good: a tour was arranged, but the promoter ran off with the money, leaving Ralph and mates busking it in the Birmingham Bullring on Christmas Eve.

The only way to go was solo - and he's been doing it that way ever since.

"Some musicians are diluted by being in a band. You can lose the intricacy and the nuance.

"When I'm on stage I'm in charge. But the audience is just as important a part of the show. A band can go off into its own world, but I have to try and make a connection."

That's something he's been succeeding at for a long time - as those joyful new e-mailers could probably tell you.