Roger's singalong with Pav.

Byline: By Wales on Sunday

Welsh Rugby Union boss Roger Lewis has told of the time he had to sing for the late-opera maestro Pavarotti.

It happened when Mr Lewis was the worldwide president of Decca records between 1996 and 1998.

At the time Mr Lewis wanted the 25-stone legend to record an album of Christmas carols.

Speaking to Wales on Sunday the 53-year-old revealed how he and two executives approached the tenor, who was buried last Saturday in his home town of Modena in Northern Italy, with the idea in May 1998, when he was performing at the Ajax stadium in Amsterdam.

But when they presented the opera star with a list of carols, which included Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Away in a Manger, he insisted he didn't know the tunes.

Mr Lewis, who Pavarotti nicknamed Il Capo, or The Boss, said: "He pointed to the first song on the list and said in an Italian accent 'My friend, how this go?'

"It was Hark the Herald Angels Sing. I said, 'How it go?' Well...

"He said, 'Sing, sing!' So my two colleagues and myself started singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

"Then he pointed to another and said, 'How this go?' It was Away in a Manger. So we sang that, too. "Then he pointed to a third and said 'How this go?'

"He could not stop laughing.

"He had just wanted to hear the boss of the record company singing carols to him.

"Can you imagine singing carols to the greatest voice on earth?"

Pavarotti famously appeared in Llangollen, Clwyd, on his first tour abroad with a male voice choir in 1959.