Marshall said that, while he was studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music in Cardiff, Tyler was singing in St David’s Hall.
“So I rocked up there, it was a St David’s Day concert, and a security person said ‘yeah, alright, whatever’. So I left a note and popped back later and he said ‘they’re in International Hotel and they say come down for tea’.
“I took a college friend with me and everyone was gobsmacked [that I] knew Bonnie Tyler. “
He said the invite to Christmas occurred when he bumped into her in the pub one Christmas Eve, when he was about 20.
He went on to attend her annual Christmas Day get-togethers for the next 29 years, until the last one she held, with husband Robert Sullivan, in 2019.
In later years, after Marshall’s mum died, his dad would also go along with him.
He described “champagne flowing all day” and plentiful buffets, as well as meeting a “host of famous people” including Catherine Zeta Jones and Sir Gareth Edwards.
Marshall, a concert pianist, said he and Tyler would “do our little turn” every year, playing carols as well as some of her biggest hits including Total Eclipse of the Heart and Holding Out For a Hero.
On one occasion, they sang “all 10 minutes of Bat Out Of Hell” with singer Lorraine Crosby, known for being the female vocalist on Meat Loaf’s 1993 hit single I’d Do Anything for Love.
