The Radio 1 DJ has since been seen by many as the man responsible for propelling Derry band the Undertones to superstardom within the blink of an eye.

The year was 1978 and Billy Doherty was working part time for the Civil Service while squeezing in time for rehearsals as The Undertones drummer, and listening to records whenever he could. An avid listener of the John Peel show, his dream was at some point to feature on it.

"That was as far as my ambition went, it was simply to get John Peel to play our record" says Billy, looking back to his teenage years when, as he says himself, music was his religion.

A far cry from the music megastores which now inhabit Derry's city centre, Billy and his contemporaries were rather more limited in the record shops available to them and the material which would become a huge influence on them.

A chance encounter with another local music enthusiast however was soon about to broaden their horizon.

"There was Ken's record shop and Paddy Rice's record shop," says Billy. "We'd just go in and buy LP's, it was just so important for us.

The light went on when we met the late Domhnall MacDermott. Domhnall had an amazing record collection. We discovered bands like MC5 and the New York Dolls, music that we didn't really have access to before and we thought this was great. It was so inspiring and it really opened."
Having been friends with John O'Neill since arriving in Derry when he was 12 in 1970 Billy attended St Peter's High School in Creggan with
Mickey Bradley and was a year above Fergal Sharkey.

The band were formed in 1975, although like most good things, success didn't come easy in the early days.

"We always talked about forming a band but we had no equipment. When we did come up with the idea our instruments were fairly basic, Michael had a mandolin, I had a set of bongos and we used to borrow John's older brother's guitar," says Billy.

"Initially we played folk type things. When we decided to take it up a notch we had to get what you would call a provident cheque. John's father Louis managed to get one which allowed us to get proper instruments in Reynold's in Raphoe and Phillip's in Butcher Street.

"There was a bomb damage there and they were selling off
equipment. John and me carried the gear from the shop to John's house in the pouring rain. I remember we had to put plastic bags over the amps, none of us had any cars."

While there was certainly a strong work ethic in terms of setting the band up, none of the guys had aspirations to conquer the world, as Billy explains:

"It wasn't a guiding light and something we always had to keep doing. We just did it, we never really analysed the thing. We wanted to play music and we wanted to be in a band.

"We never had ambition, John Peel however was religious listening. With the onset of the Punk and New Wave era we'd recorded teenage kicks. We were in John O'Neill's house and when he said: "This record's so good
I'm going to play it twice," we all went mad. Because he'd played the record, other radio 1 DJ's decided to play it and it soon became Record of the Week."

Things happened astonishingly quickly for the band between 1978 and their split in the summer of 1983.

The Derry boys who were described as the embodiment of antifashion were given a baptism of fire into the glamorous world of pop when they arrived for their first Top of the Pops performance.

"I really did find it all difficult to come to terms with," says Billy.
"One minute we're walking the streets of Derry on a Tuesday and the next thing we found out we'd have to fly to London the next day to do Top of the Pops. We had to go to Radio Rentals to tell Fergal to get the day off. I'd never even been on a plane before. It was totally surreal but a great buzz.

"I remember going to make up and getting my hair washed. That memory really stands out!"
In true antifashion style, a well placed pair of army boots almost stole the show.

"People were fussing over us and we had to do rehearsals and get things organised, I could hear the record being played back to us and I thought the volume was quite low.

"John used to wear army boots and whenever he was jumping down all I could hear was this huge thud and I was panicking incase they'd pick up that sound," laughs Billy.

While enjoying unprecedentedhourplay on the back of Teenage kicks and other hits including Jimmy Jimmy and My Perfect Cousin, Billy and his bandmates were refreshingly far from pretentious, and they really were in it just for the music.

"It wasn't a guiding light and something we always had to keep doing," says Larne born Billy.

"We just did it, we played music. We never really analysed the thing. We wanted to play music and we wanted to be in a band and we were. That was great."

While The Undertones were far from pretentious they were also considered among their peers at the time to be living a very anti rock n'roll lifestyle. Those in the industry saw them as a band who: "loved making records but hated being away from home for too long."

Keen to keep their music free of any Troubles related themes but ever concerned to be reaching out to the the universal angst ridden teen, travelling beyond England was a culture shock for the band despite having emerged from a politically turbulent city.

"The first time we flew to America there was a woman being deported out of England," says Billy.

"She was handcuffed and that really threw me. I started to see a big world out there. The Troubles had always seemed normal to us. We were teenagers and we really just got on with playing football and listening to music."

In Autumn 1979 the Undertones earned major kudos as a support act on the Clash's American tour. It was a major coup for the Derry punk band who considered the Clash as one of their biggest influences.

While this could have provided the perfect opportunity to plunge into a true rock lifestyle, the guys decided to decline the invitation to the 'TV through the hotel window' existence.

Rock legend has it that they passed an opportunity to go to a New York bar on their first night in the city, preferring to hunt for a chapel which would hold Saturday night mass.

Another little known and not very 'rock' fact surrounding Billy's memories of being on the road, also happened while the band played New York.

An anecdote as far removed from the Clash as Cliff Richard, saw the then 19-year-old drummer rescue a pigeon he found on a New York Street.

"I empathised with this pigeon walking home from a show on a really wet night," explains Billy.

"I saw the bird and it couldn't fly. John and me shared a hotel room together. I told him about the pigeon and he said we couldn't leave it in the hotel room because if the cleaners were to come in and see we'd be in bother.

"We decided to put it on the window sill and I fed it madeira cake. We were in New York for three or four days at that time. We were leaving the hotel and I decided to take the pigeon with me, I went to grab it off the window ledge and it fell off and hit the ground in a puff of feathers. I ran down to get it but it was gone.

"I later found out that pigeons don't fly at night. The moral of the story is, if you see a pigeon, just let it lie there at night. Sometimes you just have to let things lie."

The band have been criticised in some music circles for letting things lie a bit too much and not fulfilling their potential. Billy is frank about decisions taken in haste and Fergal Sharkey's controversial departure.

"I wish Fergal hadn't left and I wish we hadn't broken up," he says.
"We should probably have taken a year to ourselves to figure out what we wanted to do. I was absolutely heartbroken. When you're in your early twenties you don't really have a grasp on the bigger things in life. Fergal (Sharkey] wanted a break away totally. He probably knew we weren't business orientated.

"I was put out when he left and that angered me. I'll admit that I was awkward to work with, John and me were probably the grumpy ones. Until you step over the threshold and realise exactly what you're doing nothing changes. I realised too late.

"Things became clear to me around 1982/83. In my mind I was convinced we shouldn't have broken up."

With the luxury of hindsight, Billy claims the lack of a business minded approach to themselves could ultimately have been the Undertones downfall, although he and the other members can hold their heads high having always been true to themselves.

"I didn't realise until it was too late that you really are in an industry and you have to adapt. There are things we probably should have done that we didn't do. We probably should have listened to our manager more. You're talking about changing peoples' personalities. We played music for the fun of it.

"We never set out to change the world or anything. The only thing we had was our enthusiasm and we had an honesty and sincerity about what we did. We just weren't into all the other stuff."

Billy now lives in Derry with his wife Helena.
The Undertones, an anthology, is currently on sale in all good record stores. For further information go to www.theundertones.com