SOMETHING strange is happening.

For 25 years, the name Dean Friedman could only be said with a suppressed snigger or a slight feeling of embarrassment.

But recently the man who gave us the hugely popular but deeply uncool romantic duet Lucky Stars - about as far removed from the likes of Boney M and the Bee Gees, Friedman's chart companions back in the 1978, as you can imagine - seems to have gained a new respectability.

He has appeared on everything from Jonathon Ross's Saturday morning radio show to the I Love the 1970s nostalgia series, while relatively trendy bands such as Ben Folds Five and Barenaked Ladies have named him as an influence or covered his songs.

Could it be that Dean Friedman has finally become fashionable?

Now coming to the end of a 30-date acoustic UK tour, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary re-release of his classic album 'Well, Well,' Said the Rocking Chair, the curly-haired New Yorker believes that good songwriting will always have a market - and stresses that there's a lot more to his back catalogue than Lucky Stars.

"My stuff is really eclectic. I write observational songs about real life and stuff that's familiar to everybody, and I write in every musical idiom. My songs seems to strike a chord with people," says Friedman, now 48.

It must be frustrating to someone who considers himself a serious singer-songwriter that people only ever seem to want to talk about one 25-year-old duet.

"Most of my fans are familiar with my extensive back catalogue and realise there's a lot more to it than Lucky Stars."

Friedman's partner on the original recording of Lucky Stars was Denise Marsa. In his live shows, he gives the audience the chance to sing the girl's part - something they do with gusto.

Friedman says he was as surprised as anyone when Lucky Stars became a hit.

"I felt it could be a hit when I wrote it but I didn't expect it to be. The record company weren't that enthusiastic about it, because it was a duet and they didn't really like duets."

Despite his other two UK singles, Woman of Mine and Lydia, only just scraping into the charts, Friedman attracted enough interest with Lucky Stars and its parent album, 'Well, Well,' Said the Rocking Chair, to carve out a successful recording career - at least for a time.

His fortunes were dramatically reversed when the BBC refused to play his song McDonald's girl because it name-checked the global fast food giant - and his record company promptly dropped him.

For 20 years, Friedman was without a record deal - the ultimate frustration for someone who wrote songs almost instinctively.

Instead of twiddling his thumbs or getting bitter, Friedman threw himself into a variety of projects - some musical, others entirely unexpected.

In the 80s he wrote music for films and TV shows, including all of the country music-flavoured score to the Michael Elphick-starring comedy-drama Boon.

Far more interestingly, he became a self-taught expert in state-of-the-art technology, setting up his own company producing video games and virtual reality software - including TV's first virtual reality game, Eat-a-Bug, for Nickelodeon TV.

He also merged his musical and technological interests by inventing a line of unusual musical instruments - with such delightful names as the Booble, the Honkblatt and the Jingle-Lingle-Lily - which he now produces for theme parks and museums all over the world.

Far from being the musical recluse many thought him, the father-of-two had become one of the most enterprising artists on the planet.

"Once I was exiled by the music business I had time to pursue those other things," he says.

"Computers were really fascinating to me. Once I got into that kind of technology I just kept exploring what I could do with it.

"Even though I wasn't in the recording studio pursuing my music career I was doing very creative stuff. I was very gratified by it - I committed myself to it the same way I commit myself to finishing a song."

A fan of distinguished singer-songwriters like Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman, Friedman is a major exponent of the lost art of the story-song.

"In all of my songs I was trying to create vivid imagery and maintain a particular standard in both music and lyrics," he explains.

Like many artists, Friedman has found it difficult squaring fame and celebrity with his musical priorities - especially as people continue to assume he only wrote one song.

"Lucky Stars has been a double-edged sword," he sighs. "On the one hand it is a great pop tune and I'm very proud of it.

"But on the other hand it's annoying that the rest of my back catalogue is consistently ignored by the mainstream."

Still, at least he can console himself with one thing: "My music has never been like anything else on radio."

Dean Friedman is at the Regent Centre, Christchurch on Tuesday (box office: 01202 499148) and the Tower Arts Centre, Winchester on Thursday (box office: 01962 867986).