This beautiful song, with music by the great Ron Grainer and with lyrics by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin, was written for the show 'A Song For Europe', recorded in November 1965 and broadcast on BBC1 on 27 January 1966.
(This follows on from an earlier Ron Grainer entry for the Eurovision heats in 1957 called 'Don't Cry Little Doll'. A 78 rpm recording of this earlier entry has recently been unearthed by Shane Quentin and it can be heard here: www.mediafire.c...)
In the 1966 show, Kenneth McKellar sang five songs for viewers to choose which one should represent the United Kingdom in the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest.
In the resulting public vote 'Comes The Time' came inexplicably next to last out of the five. It was later revealed that Ron Grainer was not told the song was a potential Eurovision Song Contest choice, and wrote to a level which perhaps the typical Eurovision entry rarely saw.
The public vote instead went to the Cyril Ornadel song 'A Man Without Love', which eventually placed 9th in the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest.
Recently it has been discovered that an instrumental version of 'Comes The Time' was previously used in the fabled Ron Grainer TV musical 'Take A Sapphire' (1965/1966). As all recorded material for this show, both sound and video, was later destroyed by the BBC, 'Comes The Time', in this beautiful performance by Kenneth McKellar, contains the only music from 'Take A Sapphire' which still exists today.
(This video is hosted on my channel on behalf of noted Ron Grainer researcher Terry Fisk, who supplied the original mp3.)
Research is by Terry Fisk and Amfonyx Ron.
Audio restoration is by Ron Seniscal using IZotope RX4 Advanced.