`I wrote songs in my sleep,` Barry Manilow reveals

Legendary crooner Barry Manilow claims he wrote some of his best-loved songs in his sleep.

The 68-year-old singer has revealed how he would get up in the middle of the night and record tunes on a cassette player after they came to him in his dreams.

One of the songs Manilow penned this way was 1979 number One Voice - the hit Del Boy famously sang while drunk in the 1993 Only Fools and Horses Christmas special, sparking a riot in Peckham.

'This one woke me up,' the music veteran said. 'It really woke me up - the whole song, the rhymes, everything.

'I ran to the cassette machine and I whispered it into the cassette machine. All done.

'I still have the cassette, singing in the dark, the whole thing. Then I turned it off and went back to sleep.

'I went back in the morning, played it, there it was. Hava Nagila.'

Manilow, who is famous for sing-along hits like Mandy and Copacabana, opened up about his lengthy career during an interview with Piers Morgan on US television.