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Guys 'n' Dolls were a 1970s UK pop group. They achieved success in the mid 1970s with hits such as "There's a Whole Lot of Loving" and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me".
Guys 'n' Dolls were formed in 1974, after Ammo Productions held auditions for three girls and three boys to start the band. The six members of the group Paul Griggs, David Van Day, Thereza Bazar, Dominic Grant, Martine Howard, and Julie Forsyth (daughter of Bruce Forsyth), first met in November 1974. They released their first hit single, "There's a Whole Lot of Loving" in January 1975 (this was actually recorded by session singers, and the group were later discovered not to have actually recorded the original). In the six years that followed, the group released several more hits, including "Here I Go Again" (1975) and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" (1976). In 1977 the group had a record chart No.1 in both the Netherlands and Flanders with "You're My World", formerly made famous by Cilla Black.
By 1977, Van Day and Bazar had left the band, but went on to have success as Dollar. In 1979, the group took part in the A Song For Europe contest, hoping to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "How Do You Mend A Broken Heart?" Although the show was abandoned due to a BBC strike, the song finished in tenth place of the 12 entries when the judges cast votes on the audio recordings of the songs.
In 1980, Forsyth and Grant had their first child together, plus Howard and the Guys 'n' Dolls record producer Gerard Stellaard got married and moved to the Netherlands. After marrying, Howard left the group and was replaced by Forsyth's younger sister, Laura early in 1981. The change was short-lived, when she was replaced by Rosie Hetherington. She had previously been a part of the group Legs & Co.
In 1983, Griggs released a solo recording of The Beatles' song "You Won’t See Me", with the help of a Dutch recording studio and record company, Dureco in Weesp.
Guys 'n' Dolls finished as a unit in December 1985, having spent eleven years together. Grant and Forsyth, performed as the duo Grant & Forsyth, and had another five hits in the Netherlands. In 1988, Forsyth wrote the UK's Eurovision Song Contest entry "Go" performed by Scott Fitzgerald. Both Forsyth and Grant, together with ex-Jigsaw member Des Dyer, sang backing vocals for the song's performance at the contest in Dublin, Ireland. According to author John Kennedy O'Connor, the song finished second by a margin of one point behind Celine Dion's song for Switzerland, making it the closest ever run contest.
The original line up of Guys 'n' Dolls, (Grant, Forsyth, Griggs, Howard, Van Day and Bazar) reunited for the first time in thirty one years for a major television show in the Netherlands on 22 March 2008. This was preceded on Friday 21 March by a day of press and TV interviews.
Griggs has published a book called Diary of a Musician, based on diaries he kept from 1960. This includes a large in depth section on the story of Guys n' Dolls.
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