Reproduced from Daily Express 5 November, 1997

It's an achievement which has secured the partnership a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the most successful producer/writing team of all time.

And while the Spice Girls may be able to shop till they drop with their millions, songwriting and producing is where the real money is in the music business. Just ask Mike.

Now 45, he's been a multi-millionaire for well over a decade having hit the jackpot with Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, which was also a massive seller in the US.

More recently he and Aitken produced Robson & Jerome's debut seller Unchained Melody, still the biggest-selling single of the Nineties. Other artists who have felt their Midas touch include Cliff Richard, Kylie Minogue and Donna Summer.

Until four years ago Stock and Aitken formed two-thirds of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Mike and Matt are now involved in a legal action against former partner Pete Waterman, seeking millions of pounds in royalties they claim Waterman owes them from the hits of former Neighbours stars Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan.

Mike, brought up in Swanley, Kent, wanted to write songs from as far back as he can remember.

"I was heavily influenced by the Beatles. Until they came along, no-one really wrote their own songs," he says. "I composed my first when I was seven and saved all my pocket money to scrape together enough cash to buy a tape-recorder."

He also taught himself to play guitar and the piano and was competent enough to play in a band while at Hull University in the early Seventies.

"We were called Pact - but friends at the time said we'd be better packing it in," he laughs.

Mike took music seriously enough to drop out of university to pursue a professional songwriting career.

"I wasn't exactly an overnight success. I sold double glazing for £30 a week for a while and also worked in a factory making gaskets for cars.

"I got a bonus if I produced 880,000 gaskets a month - It was the worst job imaginable. I couldn't wait to get away."

All that is a long way from the mini pop industry that is Stock and Aitken in the late Nineties. A couple of years ago the pair opened a £4 million hi-tech recording studio in south London. Mike travels in every day from his large family home in Kent.

"It's not really like going to work, more like a very lucrative hobby really," he says.

Along with his studio staff Mike also employs several people to take care of his financial affairs.

"I have invested wisely in property but I'm not one for playing the stock market. The closest I've ever got was investing in a Pep, but it didn't perform very well.

"I also have a significant amount invested in a SIPP (a self-invested personal pension), and I can draw on the fund when I'm 50, if I want to."

One of Mike's key investments has been in his 300 acre farmhouse, set close to the South Downs.

"I'm there with my wife and three children most weekends, playing tennis and riding my motorbike. It's a simpie life really, but one which gives me a lot of pleasure.

I don't see much point in taking the family off for expensive holidays abroad when we have everything we want to hand on the farm."

AN unrewarding venture, he ruefully admits, has been a classic 1955 Jaguar XK 150, gathering dust in a garage.

"It's a lovely car, but I never drive it. I'm not sure how much it's worth, but I suppose it's a fair few thousand."

Despite being in the fortunate position of being able to have just about anything money can buy, Mike says his lifestyle is "fairly ordinary".

He adds: "I suppose I'm a bit boring. I love to write music and produce great pop songs - and just because I've managed a few in the past doesn't mean it gets easier.

"The music-buying public's tastes are changing all the time - but there's no better feeling than knowing you've written a song that everyone is going around humming."