Apart from creating the Wombles pop group, he's written and produced hit singles for Art Garfunkel, Cliff Richard, David Essex and, more recently, his protegee, Katie Melua. He's also conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and had one of his songs adopted by the German football team as its World Cup theme.

Now, at the age of 59, the singer-songwriter and producer has released a new album, A Songwriter's Tale – a collection of his own songs he has performed himself. They include versions of well-known classics like A Winter's Tale, Please Don't Fall in Love and The Closest Thing to Crazy, which Batt regards as the best song he's ever written. But isn't it a risk reworking such popular hits, even if he did write them?

"When you have a collection of songs like this, it seems a waste if you don't have a pop at it yourself. It's like having all these bikes for people to ride around on and now I'm having a go."

Batt spent many of his formative years in Yorkshire. He was brought up on a diet of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and The Who, and it was while he was a pupil at Bradford's Belle Vue School that his interest in music began.

"We lived in Heaton and my dad got this piano from a second-hand shop. I remember he could play three songs only with the black keys, but it inspired me. I taught myself by listening to records and copying other people," he says.

After moving to London and playing with several teenage bands he spotted an advertisement in the New Musical Express looking for new talent.

"I thought I'd go along and when I arrived there were two other guys in the waiting room, who turned out to be Elton John and Bernie Taupin. They'd responded to the same ad but they didn't know each other."

All three were taken on and Batt later became the record company's head A & R man before he quit to concentrate on his own music.

"I'd done a bit of producing and written a few jingles and then my agent told me about this TV series for children called The Wombles. So we met the producers and they wanted a tune, and I said, 'What about a song? It could be a hit'." And so it proved. In 1974 he set up the Wombles pop group (he was Orinoco), which became an overnight success, spawning eight hit singles and four best-selling albums. "It was fun and I'm proud of it, but it's been a furry albatross round my neck. If I fell under a bus tomorrow the papers would say, 'Womble man falls under bus', but I don't mind that," he says.

After the Wombles he wrote more big hits, but arguably his most famous song is Bright Eyes, written for the film Watership Down. "If a song touches you while you're writing it and takes your breath away a bit, then you know you've nailed it," he says, something he felt after writing Bright Eyes.

"I didn't think about who should sing it until I'd finished writing it and when I was asked who I'd like I said, 'Art Garfunkel', but I didn't think we'd get him so I handed over a list of 10 other names."

To Batt's surprise Garfunkel agreed and the song became the biggest hit of his solo career. "To begin with I found him difficult to work with, he was a perfectionist and we clashed a bit. But this changed as we got to know each other and it was an honour for me to have the guy who sang Bridge Over Troubled Water singing one of my songs."

Batt's musical repertoire isn't confined to pop songs. In 1984, he made his concert debut conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and has gone on to conduct famous pieces like The Planets Suite, by Holst, and Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture.

More recently, he's become known as Katie Melua's manager, discovering the singer during a visit to the Brit School, in London. "I remember this scruffy girl walked in and pulled out her guitar and started playing this song called Faraway Voice, and while it was a bit rough around the edges you could see there was something special about her." He signed the then 18-year-old to his recording company and produced her debut album, Call Off The Search, which went on to sell 1.8m copies in the UK alone.

He continues to write songs for Melua and other artists and hopes to do his own UK tour later this year.

"I still get a buzz from writing, performing and producing," he says, "and I still find music in all its different forms endlessly fascinating."