THIS 19-track double CD includes all of the band's sessions for the BBC.

Many are now heard for the first time since originally broadcast, including their famous Diary Of An Empty Day, which became the Top Gear theme tune - the pop show not the car show.

They are presented in chronological order and mastered by keyboard wizard Keith Emerson, who went on to become the leading light of Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

The Nice combined rock with classical influences. They recorded three albums in the Sixties including the heavily psychedelic The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack and Lumpy Gravy. The Nice split at the start of the Seventies after embarrassing the British government by burning a painting of the American flag as a protest against the Vietnam war during their 1968 Albert Hall gig.

How the American ambassador squirmed in the audience that night. Arty, farty, hippie nostalgia.

Updated: 10:00 Thursday, January 02, 2003