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The groups are recruited on the high street, but the research itself takes place in private homes. Questions are fired at potential customers about packaging, track listing, artist familiarity, imagery — “the usual things that anybody associated with marketing a product will do”, Berg says.

In the case of many recent successes, that research uncovered a tranche of vintage artists who were not being properly compiled. Before this year, Wilde was touring happily, but since 1962 his record sales had been, to borrow from his first hit, in an endless sleep.

That was until Born to Rock’n’Roll: the Greatest Hits, released in March, sold 80,000. Wilde is “over the moon” about it, Berg says. Brown’s February best-of, put out to mark the 50th anniversary of the genial, spiky-haired survivor, has sold 100,000 copies. “Marty and Joe are on the road all the time, they’ve got a solid audience and they’ve made a good living on that live network over the years, but having this gives them another dimension. It means they get promotion and sell more dates out.” Brown, indeed, will follow a recent successful tour with a celebratory show to mark that anniversary at the Albert Hall on September 24, with guest appearances by Mark Knopfler, Jools Holland, Dave Edmunds and many others.

A current best-of by the Liverpool veterans the Searchers, released with a mind to their home town’s status as European Capital of Culture and to the group’s indefatigable touring, will move 60,000-70,000 units. UMTV also sensed that the time was right this year for Fury, an earlier hero of the city, to get some new appreciation.

They weren’t wrong: His Wondrous Story has sold 150,000 copies.

The numbers can be even more impressive when it comes to various-artist oldies compilations, which are shunted into a less visible listing because chart methodology dictates that they don’t belong in the “main” artist survey. UMTV’s Dreamboats & Petticoats, a 52-track rock’n’roll scrapbook, was so successful, with 600,000 sales, that it has become a brand in itself.

A new collection of instrumentals, entitled Dreamboats & Petticoats Presents Foottappers, featuring the likes of the Shadows, Tornados, the Ventures and even (we are not worthy) Dick Dale, was released with Father’s Day, today, squarely in its sights, and is selling well. Berg talks, as record-company people do, about a “huge brand extension” of the Dreamboats concept, to be announced soon.

The television marketing of music began in earnest in the early 1970s, with the various-artist grab-bags of such companies as Ronco and Arcade. For individual stars, however, the “golden greats” explosion was detonated in the summer of 1976, with the Beach Boys. “TV advertising was like a revolution then,” Berg says. “And that was before you had CD.”

As music itself has aged, so has the oldies consumer: “The average age of buyers then was probably late twenties, early thirties. Now you’ve got that same generation, or maybe slightly older, so it’s the 50- and 60-plus market.”

Next for the treatment is Petula Clark, now 75 and in stores tomorrow with Then & Now: The Very Best Of.

In this MySpace and Facebook age of music marketing to the young, it is strange to think that our Pet was market-researched over tea and biscuits and questionnaires. “You’ve always got a gut feeling about something, and often it’s right, but you need to go into the marketplace,” Berg says. “I suppose you could call it older social networking.”

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