The Hour

It is 20 years since they first hit the charts but Craig and Charlie Reid of The Proclaimers still need to pinch themselves after releasing their eighth album on Monday.

The Edinburgh twins have been on quite a journey since struggling on the dole in the 1980s while pursuing their musical dream. Now two decades on and with countless hits under their belt, the bespectacled 47-year-old’s enjoy fame on both sides of the Atlantic, culminating in an appearance on US cartoon Family Guy.

The folk/pop singers told STV’s The Hour how they are now enjoying the most fruitful period of their career.

Craig said: “The last sort of eight or nine years have been the busiest we’ve ever had. There’s been an album every second year, a tour pretty much somewhere every year. So it’s been pretty busy and the most satisfying part of our career so far.”

He continued: “We’d been on the dole a long time, we’d been off it a wee while, but we didn’t want to go back to that. If we could get around and play folk clubs or left field kind of things and thought we’d have an audience we give it a couple of years and see how it went. We didn’t and we didn’t think we’d still be sitting 20 years later still doing it.”

The 500 Miles and Letter from America stars couldn’t hide their joy at being featured in the “revolutionary” comedy Family Guy.

Charlie said: “It was brilliant. We were in America when we got the call to say could we come to the studio, meet the guys and do a bit of a voice over singing thing for this 30, 40 second clip, whatever it was.

He added: “told me it’s going to happen again, I don’t know whether it will happen or not, but I think there’s a Scottish connection guy that does most of the voiceovers.

Notes & Rhymes was released on 15 June. The single Love Can Move Mountains is available as a digital download.