Exclusive:On-song Hearts man's story: Derek McInnes text, family tragedy, Tom Jones and why encore will come later

It didn't take much for Chisholm to presume one of his mates from his local was at it. But after he received confirmation that yes, that was in fact the Hearts manager’s number, some tears might have started welling up. Or it may have just been a speck of Saharan sand blown into his eye by the sandstorms that affect the area at this time of year. At least that’s what he told his wife, Gill, as he tried to account for the wet eyes.

The frustratingly overcast and hazy conditions on the Costa Blanca mean that when we met earlier this week following his return, he has no noticeable suntan to speak of. No matter. The well-kept septuagenarian still looks radiant following the reception his spine-tingling live rendition of The Hearts Song - which he first recorded 40 years ago - received just over two weeks earlier before a Premiership fixture against Aberdeen. It went down a storm and set the tone for a rousing Hearts performance in the vital 1-0 win, hence a grateful McInnes getting in touch afterwards. “All these little moments and extra effort from everyone have a big impact… it was the perfect way to start the game,” he wrote. “Thanks again for the brilliant job.”

It’s natural to expect that Hearts might seek to create the magic before Saturday’s match against Dundee, which is the first time Hearts have played at home since Chisholm led around 18,000 fans through a song even neutrals could easily find themselves humming along to: ‘This is my stooooory, this is my sooooong!”

A club official did put out some feelers. But Chisholm if nothing if not a showman. Leave them wanting more is a mantra he has lived by since his time fronting the 1970s band Bilbo Baggins, although that’s not to say he won't be persuaded to take the microphone one more time with feeling before the end of the season. Anything to be of service to the Hearts cause in these title dog days.

“You know I am long enough in the game to realise that although there has been a bit of a clamour to do it for the remaining home games, I think you’ll agree this could be overkill,” he wrote to an intermediary from whom he was hoping to gain guidance. He wanted to stress he wasn’t playing hard to get. “My suggestion was to do it again after the split,” he says. “Let’s just hope we keep winning now!

"I think doing it again immediately is a bit silly,” he adds. “A bit: ’Oh here he is again’. You are never going to relive that one.” He was so high – in the non-rock 'n' roll sense of the word—that he says he could have flown to Alicante the following morning without needing a plane. One wonders if it will feel strange when the song plays before kick-off against Dundee and he’s back in his seat in Section R of the main stand. Does he even sing along? “The thing is, because my voice is so bloody loud, if I start singing I make a bit of spectacle of myself …the only time I really do that is semi-finals and cup finals.”

He laughs that he expects everyone to bow when he takes his seat alongside his son David before this weekend’s game. He is certainly more recognisable now. Prior to a few weekends ago, it was only his voice that was so well kent at Hearts games.

It was 40 years ago last month when the Edinburgh Evening News reported that The Hearts Song was being given “a new lease of life”. It added: “It could be a month or more before it is available. But a new recording…is on the way. Made in Glasgow ….at the suggestion of the Glasgow Hearts Supporters’ Club…but sung by a rabid Hearts fan.

“The revitalised version of ‘Hearts, Hearts, Glorious Hearts’, originally recorded by Edinburgh comedian Hector Nicol who died last year and which is being played at every Hearts home game, was recently done in a Glasgow studio by Colin Chisholm.” At the time, Hearts were sitting top of the old Premier Division. A 1-1 draw against Celtic the following weekend left them three points clear at the top with eight games to go.

When the record eventually came out, the choice of one of the B side tunes included in a medley raised eyebrows: “Championees!”

The single charted on 17 May 1986 and reached number 92, a week after Hearts had seen their league and cup double hopes go up in smoke following defeats at Dundee in the league and then Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup final at Hampden. A signing event was held at a shop on Princes Street attended by some players at the start of the week leading up to the fateful afternoon at Dens Park. Chisholm was behind the goal where Albert Kidd scored twice.

He knows what some people say about the record: “You jinxed it!” There’s nothing presumptuous about his latest performance. It’s part of a wider effort, as McInnes acknowledged, to try to help Hearts over the line.

Why Chisholm didn’t get the Hearts season ticket

It’s certainly not for any personal gain. Chisholm is quoted as saying that all he wanted for lending his rich baritone rock voice to the record was a season ticket for Tynecastle. “Aye, aye, that’s right, that's what I asked for,” he says now. And did he get one? “No,” he replies.

“It was a weird one. I didn’t want paid for it.” Still, it was from a straightforward assignment. “The song's a bit wordy and long and goes on and on,” he says. One of the other songs chosen for the B side, slightly controversially in retrospect though they were different times, is “Hello, Hello” – for those wondering, “we’re out to beat you every time” substitutes a certain line - required a difficult, high key. The players’ voices were added into the mix later.

Interestingly, Chisholm also sang on a Hibs song, Hibs Heroes, due to his friendship with former Hibs chairman David Duff. He felt less compunction about asking for payment for that, which he received. Hearts, meanwhile, were as unyielding as the old Castle rock.

“The old chairman Chris Robinson came in and said he wanted to do something about The Hearts Song, basically get ownership of it,” he recalls. “Someone (from the club) contacted me…I said, 'If we could have season tickets for life, basically for my son and me.' They came back and said they didn't want to be held responsible for the great Waldo’s (Wallace Mercer’s) mistakes... i.e., that should have been done at the time.

“I said, ‘Well give me a percentage then’. I would not have taken a penny but they started using it for adverts. They were advertising everything using it. And I was a session singer. It was my livelihood. Eventually I said, 'Just give me a percentage'." It lasted for about a year!”

Famously, Marshalls – “the chunky chicken champions!” - sponsored the single. “And I didn’t even get a chicken!” smiles Chisholm. Nevertheless, he considers it a career high point, which is saying something considering everything else he has accomplished. He rates singing the song live at Tynecastle up there with his appearance on the BBC’s The Voice in 2013 after his daughter Chloe had secretly applied. It didn’t take long for Sir Tom Jones to swivel around in his chair as Chisholm, then aged 60, gave I Drove All Night everything he had in a passionate performance.

“Sir Tom pushing his buzzer was such a relief.,” he says now. “You’re out there singing in front of millions. I didn’t want to be a failure. It felt like it was my last chance in the music world. So it was more of a feeling of relief compared to what I felt at Tynecastle a few weeks ago, when that roar at the end…..and I know it was not for me. But it was just so euphoric. They even held back kick off for another eight seconds. The Aberdeen players were just standing around while I finished!” Such respect has been hard earned.

Besides being an exceptional singer, Chisholm is a songwriter of repute. However, it’s hard to imagine he has penned anything as poignant as the last line of a newspaper article reporting the death of a couple aged 54 and 49 in a car accident in Angus just over 50 years ago. Few have.

“In the back of the wrecked car at Glamis lay a record player and a copy of the record,” noted The Courier. Simple, devastating. The reporter sent out on this bleak assignment had earlier detailed why this couple, Alex and Ena, from Edinburgh, had been making the journey in the first place. One of their two sons had just released a record and they were taking a copy of the disc as well as something to play it on to the mother’s sister in Kirriemuir. Travelling in a Hillman Imp, their vehicle was hit while coming out of a junction by a Ford Cortina travelling from the Forfar direction towards Perth. They were buried next to each other four days later in Dundee.

Having waved his proud parents off that Saturday morning in October 1974, Chisholm was now orphaned. Two police officers knocked on the door later, informing him of the tragedy. “I always remember just staring at the bars of the electric fire," he says. "I had been watching the horse racing. I always liked a wee bet. And there was a horse running called Pendil, which was famous at the time. It’s funny how these things stick in your mind.”

A mile or so away at Tynecastle, Hearts had just drawn 1-1 with Rangers but although a Jambo through and through – his first game was against Kilmarnock in the early 1960 - his attention had been diverted in another direction due to his musical talent.

Chisholm was just 21 and was clambering up the rungs of the pop stardom ladder with the band Bilbo. A first single, Saturday Night, had caused some ripples. The next one, a cover of the Ronnettes’ The Sha Na Na Na Song, was the record his parents had been taking to his aunt on that dreadful afternoon. “I never liked it,” he says. “But anyway, that was the follow up. And they were taking the demo disc, if you like, to my auntie up in Kirriemuir, my mum’s sister. And it was on the way up that they were killed.”

Mr and Mrs Chisholm never saw their son play to millions on Top of the Pops, which he did four years later with Bilbo on a show where one of the fellow guests was Blondie. Unsurprisingly for such a versatile vocalist, Chisholm is expert at mimicking Debbie Harry’s New Jersey drawl. She popped her head through the door to their dressing room before their performance of She’s Gonna Win, which reached No. 42 in the charts. “She said, ‘You know, guys, I have been listening to that record and I heard it on the radio,'" Chisholm says, adopting the required accent. "'I said to my manager, ‘That’s such a sweet song. And I really like that voice." Boney M also performed Brown Girl in the Ring on the same show, which was watched by millions.

What Chisholm would have done for his parents to have seen all this. After their death, the band had given him some space. “They were like, ‘You don’t have to come back, we understand’. But I always wanted to come back. The band became my family.”

Chisholm still lives in the same former corporation house in Chesser where he grew up and which he bought after marrying. “It’s a nice, quiet street. Good parking and it’s a short walk for the football,” he says. He continues to honour his mum and dad. “They were a working couple,” he recalls. “They weren’t drinkers either. They were really quiet. Their big thing was a bottle of Sweetheart Stout on a Friday night – between them – and a packet of vinegar crisps.”

His father also watched Hearts as often as he could afford. It’s why Chisholm ran a finger across his dad’s membership card for The Ace of Hearts Club—number 1100, "valid until 15 January 1971"—that he made sure was in his wallet when he stepped onto the sacred turf earlier this month.