Following the 1965 opening of Passion Flower Hotel its book writer Wolf Mankowitz stated that

Expresso Bongo was compiled by four writers who would go on to have substantial careers in the genre, to whom Mankowitz was referring with ‘those of us who have been working for the musical theatre for some years’ . The book for Expresso Bongo was based on his original story by Mankowitz, and Julian More, the music by David Heneker and Monty Norman. More was not involved with the next collaboration Make Me an Offer – book by Mankowitz, music and lyrics by Heneker and Norman. Important works of the verismo school, these singled out the four young writers as bright hopes for the future. Considered as a school of writers, their contribution to British musicals has been considerable.

David Heneker: Half a Sixpence * Charlie Girl

After contributing with Monty Norman to the 1960 revue The Art of Living, David Heneker effectively struck out on a solo career in musicals, at once scoring a definite London and Broadway hit with an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel Kipps. Half a Sixpence (Cambridge Theatre, 21 March 1963; 679) bore the mark of its commissioning impresario, Harold Fielding, whose presence was also to be felt in the creation of Charlie Girl and Phil the Fluter. Written to provide a vehicle for the pop-singer and sometime actor Tommy Steele, Half a Sixpence proved that Heneker, adrift from his former collaborators, was a dependable lyricist, able to turn out words appropriate to his task. Beverley Cross’s book and Heneker’s songs skilfully fashioned Wells’ story to Steele’s cheerful persona. There was no need for audiences to imagine that Steele was playing anyone other than himself. In Kipps’s Act I solo ‘She’s Too Far Above Me’ Heneker pandered to Steele’s doeeyed innocence (he would never again write so submissive a love song for a male character), while the plunkety-plunk brightness of ‘Money to Burn’ spoke of the vaudeville to which Steele’s reputation was already linked.