Whittaker hosted a radio program in The United Kingdom in 1971, backed by an orchestra with arrangements by Zack Lawrence. Whittaker says "one of the ideas I had was to invite listeners to send their poems or lyrics to me and I would make songs out of them. We got a million replies, and I did one each week for 26 weeks."

Ron A. Webster, a silversmith from Birmingham, England, sent Whittaker his poem entitled "The Last Farewell", and this became one of the selections to appear on the radio program. It was recorded, and featured on Whittaker's 1971 album New World in the Morning (A Special Kind of Man in the US and Canada). Although the song nearly reached the music charts at the time, it is one of the fifty all-time singles to have sold 10 million (or more) physical copies worldwide.