Marty Wilde says he ‘can’t stop’ making music as he approaches 85th birthday

Marty Wilde has said he “can’t stop” making music despite approaching his 85th birthday.

The singer, who scored a string of hits in the 50s and 60s with songs such as Teenager In Love, joked he was looking “passable” ahead of his big day on April 15.

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “I love music, I adore music, I have done since I was a child. And I can’t stop, that’s the strange thing.

“I keep saying I’m going to retire and then I don’t.

Marty Wilde duets with daughter Kim Wilde on a new song about Elvis (Ian West/PA)PA Archive/PA Images - Ian West

“I keep saying I’m never going to write another song. And then I just keep writing. I can’t stop it.”

Wilde duets with his daughter, Kids In America singer Kim Wilde, on a new song about his hero Elvis Presley, called Talking About Elvis.

He said he did once have an opportunity to meet Presley, who he always idolised, but the trip was cancelled at the moment because he had to promote his first big self-penned hit.

He said: “I had to promote Bad Boy. It was all arranged. I was gonna go the next day. It was in Germany and his bodyguard Lamar Fike fixed it up.

“In the end, my manager said ‘I’m sorry, we’ve got to plug this, we need it to get up the charts.’ So I didn’t get to see him.”

Asked what it would mean to him to meet Presley, he said: “I think I would have been very, very quiet. I wouldn’t know really what to have said.

“Loads of my friends met him and he was he was always very polite, but I would have seen him in a much more personal level because there were no cameras around and he was in the Army then, so it would have been fantastic.”

Wilde is currently on tour and will play a homecoming gig in Blackheath in London next month.