Alfie (Burt Bacharach song) featured on the October 1966 album release entitled "Chér". Despite the relative failure of the version of "Alfie" cut for the US film release, Cilla Black's UK success with the song had attracted sufficient attention in the US for several American singers besides Cher to cover the song by the time the film "Alfie" opened in the US in August 1966. Two of these covers actually predate the Cher recording although neither was released prior to Cher's, the first evident recording of "Alfie" by an American singer being that cut by Jerry Butler in May 1966 which first appeared as
Tony Selby the BBC television drama "Three Clear Sundays", directed by Ken Loach. He had one of his earliest film acting roles in The Early Bird (1965) "Alfie" (1966), starring Academy award-winner Michael Caine, and his other film appearances include "Press for Time" (1966), "Poor Cow" (1967), "Witchfinder General" (1968), "Before Winter Comes" (1969), "In Search of Gregory" (1969), "Villain" (1971), "Nobody Ordered Love" (1972), and "" (1973). In 1971-2 he played magician's assistant Sam Maxstead in children's supernatural TV series "Ace of Wands" and had a brief 1972 appearance as a jealous fiancé in "Public Eye". Other notable television appearances included