Chapter One: The Smash Hits Years

When I was seven Jason Donovan jostled for place on my bedroom wall with multi-coloured My Little Ponies. Ever wary of the fact that my parents wouldn't tolerate more than the odd poster I kept a little scrapbook into which I'd carefully place pictures of him that I'd cut out of Smash Hits or a now defunct magazine called Fast Forward which holds the dubious distinction of being the first magazine I ever bought. Sometimes one of my older cousins who herself had a fondness for Jason would give me copies of any pictures that she had in duplicate. These would be cut out, covered in glue that left a pealing residue on my fingers, and stuck in. Over the months I filled maybe ten or fifteen pages of the scrapbook this way. I'd also stuck some pictures of Kylie in there because, it had to be faced, in 1990 it was impossible to like Jason without also liking Kylie.
Given this early foray into the realms of fandom it was surprisingly late before I bought my first single. I'd hovered up videos from Jason, Kylie and, it must be confessed, Sonia and Smash Hits had become a fortnightly purchase but it had never occurred to me to buy a single. I'd been quite happy working my way through my parents' music collection, something which meant that by the age of ten I knew Abba's back catalogue inside out. My unfinished Jason Donovan scrapbook long since packed away the first record that I purchased was Take That's 'Everything Changes'. I already had some of their posters scattered around my bedroom walls but it was their performance at the Brits that year, wearing electric blue suits and singing a Beatles medley, which compelled me to go to Woolworths and spend my pocket money. I came home with the new purchase, popped it into my personal stereo, sat on the swing in my garden and listened. I spent the next hour or so swinging and listening to first Robbie and then the Brits medley.

From the moment I sat singing 'everything changes but yo-ooou' on my garden swing I'd gained entrance to a secret world that I'd previously had no idea existed. After this initial purchase others quickly followed, a Take That album or two, some random singles I can no longer remember the name of, the most recent 'Now' CD. As my final months at primary school came around for the first time I experienced the heady rush of pop infatuation that was to become a pattern of the following years. The group who really mark the beginning of pop almost-obsession do not even manage to scrape the kudos of Take That. No, my real introduction to the world of the teenage pop fan came from a blink and you'll miss them boy band named Bad Boys Inc. The name undoubtedly says why they were destined for a rather shorter period of fame than their usual counterparts. There was nothing even remotely bad about them. They all looked like nice well scrubbed boys who went home to have their tea cooked by their mums. My own particular favourite was the lead singer, a floppy haired brunette who may or may not have been called Matthew. My room was quickly adorned with his face, their singles barely came out of my stereo and for a couple of months I bought every magazine they were in and watched ever tv show they appeared on. With their colour co-ordinated clothing and their somewhat dubious asexuality they were exactly what I needed, as an 11 years old with the first rush of hormones flooding my body. Take That, with their now 15 and 16 year old fans, were moving on to the shaven heads and black pvc clothing of 'Sure'. I wasn't ready for the move - Howard's dreadlocks had begun to scare me - and I still wanted my boybands sweet and distinctly unthreatening. Bad Boys Inc fitted the bill.

The end of the affair came almost as quickly as it had started. I came home from school one afternoon and settled down to watch CBBC. At 5.00pm Newsround started and soon Bad Boys Inc had filled my screen. I watched in silence as they announced their split, each proclaiming their future career intentions. After that appearance on Newsround Bad Boys Inc slipped out of my life forever. As a mark of my attachment to them I fashioned a small 'RIP Bad Boys Inc' banner out of some grey sugar paper and stuck it to my wall. It remained there with a clutch of posters for the next few months, long after it had outstayed its welcome. Despite the place Bad Boys Inc had come to fill I wasn't consumed by a long period of mourning. Indeed by the time that Neighbours started I think I'd gotten over their untimely demise. I was 11 after all, Take That were still surging onwards there was a whole world of packaged popstars out there for me to greedily consume.

I suspect that the final weeks of Bad Boys Inc coincided with my discovery of the act that was to colour the next three years of my life. It was the summer of 1994, the sun was shining and PJ and Duncan AKA had just broken the shackles of Byker Grove and released what is possibly their one and only classic: 'Let's Get Ready to Rhumble'. To this day I've found no one who is able to adequately explain why their 'rhumble' had an 'h' in it. But 'h' or no 'h' I'd discovered the artists now known as Ant and Dec and soon I was copying their dance routines and chalking up an impressive collection of home made videos of their television appearances. From the moment of rhumble I eagerly collected everything that I could get my hands on. Singles, albums, t-shirts and this time I filled no less than four scrapbooks with their pictures and interviews. My most treasured possession, however, was a signed copy of their second album, 'Top Katz', procured for me by my uncle for one of my birthdays. Despite their somewhat lax attitude towards correct spelling they'd firmly captured me. And in Dec I developed my first full blown celebrity crush; his face adorned my walls, the diary I kept for a few months when I was 13 contains a few carefully tested versions of 'Corinne Donnelly'. Around that time I also had my first piece of writing appear in print - a short poem entitled 'I know I'm mad but…' which detailed my Ant and Dec obsession and made its way into a Yorkshire schools poetry collection.

Through summer of 1994 to 1997, whilst Britpop exploded around me, there was the one musical constant of Ant and Dec in my life. From videos with former Monkees, to Dec's first guitar chords to the final moments of their final single, a song called 'Falling' which bore no relation whatsoever to their earlier nonsensical offerings, I was there. By the time they parted from their record company and began the final synthesis which would turn them into the BAFTA winning television presenters of today my relationship with them wasn't as intense as it once had been but their faces still smiled back at me from my bedroom wall. There were three major consequences to this period of my life. Firstly it has left me with the ability to recite more PJ and Duncan AKA lyrics than any twenty-something should be able to. Secondly it has left me with a continuing relationship with Newcastle Utd created via Ant and Dec's own support of them. It's not an irony lost on me that the football relationship created far outlasted the musical one. Thirdly it has left me with what I assume to be an eternal affection for them (I might say eternal love but that would be too strong and, anyway, only five other Ant and Dec fans out there would get that that was the name of one of their early singles). All their subsequent success may have nothing to do with me but I almost feel a little part of it. I believed in them when they were two former Byker Grove actors with questionable haircuts singing about being crazy katz. Somehow the belief has had its payoff.

Ant and Dec may have played the leading parts but they weren't the only ones gracing the stage. Take That and the brief liaison with Bad Boys Inc had proven that I was a boyband fan waiting to happen and it was Louis Walsh's assault on the charts with Boyzone that harnessed this. In the autumn of 1996 I saw both Boyzone and Ant and Dec on the Smash Hits tour at Sheffield Arena and had I died that day I'm sure I would have been entirely happy. Amongst the garishly coloured shirts and the even worse dancing I formed an attachment to the only blonde male of my teens and when Ronan's 'Ten Years of Hits' CD found its way into my collection at the end of 2004 it marked the anniversary for both of us. The other stalwart, after what looked to have been a descent into oblivion, proved to be the person whose voice had featured heavily on the first single I'd ever bought. When Robbie left Take That he gained instant points in my mind and thus I have, tucked away, a copy of his first solo single 'Freedom'. On its release his debut solo album, Life Thru A Lens, looked to have bombed as 11,000 copies were sold and it failed to make the top ten. Following the money, the plaudits and the sold out Knebworth I'm quietly pleased to be able to say that I was one of those 11,000 people who bought Robbie's album that week, long before 'Angels' hit the radar and resurrected his career.

There is something of a dichotomy of having been an unabashed pop fan at a time when Britpop was at its height. Oasis were singing about cigarettes and alcohol whilst I was listening to 'Love me for a reason'. But even I couldn't avoid being swept up into the musical trend of the moment. I listened to the chart countdown every week, my magazine collection had long since expanded from Smash Hits; it would have taken more than a predilection for inoffensive boyband members to have shielded me from what was going on. In my single sex high school, where wannabe boybands occasionally came to play for us and unabashed cheese was the order of the day, I was the closest thing to Britpop which they had. Stickers of Damon Albarn had made their way on to my planner, I remember the intense excitement of the Blur vs Oasis week and going out to hurriedly buy my copy of 'Country House' on the Monday afternoon. I could sing along to Sleeper and Elastica, Suede and Catatonia and even had a brief flirtation with the much hyped and short-lived Menswear. But largely Britpop was an alternative narrative that I touched upon but which never compelled me as my other musical life did.

By the end of 1999 Boyzone were proclaiming their 'temporary' split and the clutch of pop acts in the chart left me strangely unmoved. The Spice Girls had ceased being a credible alternative some weeks after 'Wannabe' was released, even the moment of All Saints had passed. The new parade of boybands, with Westlife leading the way, seemed hopelessly sanitised and, it hit me, even lacking talent. I wanted something more than pretty boys sounding nice. I wanted my music to mean something. For the first time in nearly a decade my bedroom walls were no longer covered in posters taken from Smash Hits. Aged 16 and a half I was ready for Britpop. Unfortunately Britpop wasn't ready for me and had already started to fizzle out. The result of this was that my musical tastes found other outlets, at first just in the direction of the Dawson's Creek soundtrack which did its best to introduce me to American groups I'd never heard of and whose albums I'd purchase off of Amazon. This wasn't the safest way of finding new music, sometimes it worked spectacularly well - as in the case of Train - other times it resulted in my listening to the CD once before relegating it firmly to the back of my collection. There was one group I didn't even get halfway through the album before abandoning it. Then I went back to my parents' collection. This time I managed to properly discover the Beatles. Commenting on the moment I discovered the Beatles is almost like talking about the moment I discovered Shakespeare. Like the Bard, their words are an easy reference point even if we're not aware of them. But there's a difference between saying 'To be or not to be' and having understood Hamlet just as much as there's a difference between playing 'When I'm Sixty Four' on the recorder and having listened to the White Album.

As if my new musical knowledge gave me a new license to return to disposable pop music I also developed a painfully kitsch relationship with the three girl, two boy bubblegum pop of Steps. But it was ok; I could dance to 'Tragedy' and have Steps albums in my record collection because I knew the words to 'Eleanor Rigby'. Eleanor righted everything.

It was Eleanor who came with me to Oxford in the mish-mash of cds that made the trip down south. There, along with the photos that graced the plasterboard walls of my room, a giant Travis poster, the identikit of the front of The Invisible Band album, only with the band, well, visible had made its way into my possession. Somehow, though, music wasn't as all consuming as it had once been. I was happy with the collection of CDs I had and following the rather stellar progress of Robbie. Anyway, I'd discovered student theatre and suddenly my room was bristling with Posters advertising plays. In my second year I took a fistful of these back to Oxford and the Travis poster, the last outpost, remained packaged up back at home. That year I went to over 50 plays. The closest I got to a gig was watching two of my friends in the college orchestra. It seemed that the age of pop obsession had passed; a relic to be packed up with those PJ and Duncan records. Little did I suspect, as I divided my time between pubs, backstage of theatres and drama society meetings with only the occasional tutorial break, that it was merely hibernating before its greatest assault.