A vegetable plot is not the first place you would expect to find a disco legend.

But Patrick Olive, founder member of Hot Chocolate, is never happier than when he is tending his apricots or digging his potatoes.

The band were one of the biggest in the UK during the Seventies and Eighties with a string of hits including Every 1s A Winner, It Started With A Kiss and You Sexy Thing.

The band also hold the distinction of being the first pop group to play in Buckingham Palace.

Patrick still has a gruelling touring schedule with the group he formed in 1970 but finds his garden in a West Sussex village the ideal spot to unwind.

Patrick, 62, said: "I'm very proud of my vegetables. We are organic and almost self-sufficient.

"We have not bought potatoes or carrots for yonks. The only things we go to the supermarket for are bananas and oranges but most soft fruits we grow ourselves.

"I got back from a show in Wales at the weekend and the first thing I did on Sunday night was go into the garden to see if my melons had grown and my apricots were ripe."

His old tracksuit and wellingtons are a world away from the medallions and disco suits of Hot Chocolate's heyday.

But the group's fans all across Europe still love to dress up to see them perform.

Patrick said: "It's fantastic to see all the people in their great big Afros and flares. They really go to town.

"We tend to dress more conventionally these days - some of us could never get into the flares we wore then."

The group originally started as a reggae act but Patrick said: "We dropped the reggae thing. It was not going anywhere very fast so we got into the disco and funk melodic thing."

The move paid dividends with their first hit Love Is Life reaching the top ten and becoming a classic. It remains Patrick's favourite song by the band.

Other hits followed, including Brother Louie and their first number one So You Win Again in 1977.

The original line-up was guitarist Frank De Alli, drummer Ian King, songwriter and lead singer Errol Brown, bass player Tony Wilson and pianist Larry Ferguson. De Alli left and Ian King was replaced by Tony Connor.

The group had many exciting times touring but Patrick said his main highlight was playing before the Queen.

He said: "I will always remember Buckingham Palace. Before Prince Charles got married, they had a pre-nuptial ball and we were the first pop band to play in the palace.

"We played a whole set through the evening and we watched in amazement as we played You Sexy Thing, the Queen and Prince Philip were waltzing. All the younger royals were whooping it up."

You Sexy Thing was the only record to make the top ten in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties - the latter time after being used on the soundtrack to hit movie The Full Monty.

Errol Brown left in 1987 to pursue a solo career but the band has carried on with Greg Bannis who performed as Brown on the TV programme Stars In Their Eyes.

Patrick is still on good terms with Errol and hoped one day to reunite the band's original line-up for a one-off gig with a full orchestra.

In the meantime, Hot Chocolate are still incredibly busy. On October 9, they join acts such as Rose Royce and the Tavares for a huge disco show at the Brighton Centre.

This will give Patrick, who was raised in the Bahamas, a chance to be closer to his family and his vegetables than he usually gets on tour.

But fellow residents in the village where he lives with Jane, his wife of four years, might not know there is a music legend in their midst.

He said: "There are a few who know who I am but I don't publicise it that much."

Pub-goers at his local, The Sussex Pad, opposite Shoreham airport, are more likely to recognise him, however.

He laughed: "The owner is always asking me to play something on the piano but nerves get the better of me.

"Most of the customers are friends. I can take criticism from strangers but not from friends."

Patrick took a step into the local limelight last week when he won a vacuum cleaner in a competition run by Carters Domestic Appliances, Brighton.

He was the 100th person to buy a Miele washing machine and won a free vacuum cleaner, appropriately called a Hot Chocolate.

At least the carpet will come up clean if he walks in wearing his muddy gardening boots.