[click to embiggen]
Awwww...
It's my ickle baby sister's SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY party today!
Not so "ickle" nowadays, of course:
By way of a little tribute, this - that she and I used to dance to at the long-gone Lazers nightclub "Bowie/Roxy" nights in Newport way back in the early 1980s...
Great (if distant) memories...
Happy Birthday, Hils!! We'll all be there tonight to celebrate your dotage...😂
Happy Gay Xmas Eve, folks! The "Big Weekend" is almost here, the Essex Boys will be heading to stay over at ours tonight (probably including a dress rehearsal), and the excitement is mounting...
To begin the festivities, how about a song from that poppers-dominated dancefloor era, the 1980s - when I first emerged onto the gay scene in an explosion of pink fairy-dust and started shagging my way through South Wales - in the company of everyone's fave "Red Light District scrubbers", the Flirts?! Thank Disco Hi-NRG It's Friday!
Happy Pride Weekend, dear reader!
As this stifling heat continues [it hit 36.7C/98.1F in Somerset, and 33.5C/92F in London] - and having already taken a trip back to the "yardstick against which all heatwaves are compared", 1976 yesterday - I thought it would be interesting to compare what the summer was like a decade later, in 1986.
Although it's hardly gone down in the record books for its decent weather, it's interesting to note that forty years ago this week, we were indeed in the middle of a hot spell [albeit a shorter heatwave than we have now, with just three consecutive days over 30C/86F]. Also - in a spooky echo of today - in the news headlines was a war in Lebanon, a World Cup, Madonna, and a delusional right-wing US president destabilising the Middle East...
But what was at the top of our charts, I hear you ask?
This!
The last ever single by Wham! before George officially went solo.
Four decades? Where do they go? Sniff.
Almost there...
As what might well turn out to be a decent warm weekend is looming on the horizon, so we need to get ourselves into the party mood!
How about something completely hilarious, as we venture into the murky world of obscure low-budget 80s Hi-NRG productions, such as this one - from an US "artiste" who was based entirely in Japan (where presumably they didn't mind that she could barely sing and certainly couldn't dance).
Enjoy - and Thank Disco It's Friday!
Have a great one, dear reader!
Phew! What a scorcher!
Yes indeed - exactly as the Met Office forecast - the thermometer in our extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers hit (at least) 32C/89.6F this afternoon. And to think, last week we had the heating on in the evenings... Britain, Britain, Britain.
To celebrate the arrival of summer, this:
Pretty little things, weren't they? {{cough}}
Of that song, however, it is this version I remember most fondly:
Unfortunately I can't find an actual video of Tik and Tok performing that song, but here they are in their glory, doing what they did best!
And finally, the band from whence Tik and Tok emerged - who I saw live way back in the early 1980s:
Ah, memories...
It's another snippets post, dear reader:
Utter genius!
And the weather? Blustery, showers, still too cold for mid-May. Grim. However, the forecast looks much improved for the end of the week and the Bank Holiday Weekend!
Sharing the date with a whole raft of fellow celebrants, including Dame Penelope Keith, Sir Alec Guinness, Marvin Gaye, Émile Zola, Hans Christian Andersen, Casanova, Linford Christie, Serge Gainsbourg, Paul Gambaccini, Emmylou Harris, Pedro Pascal, Buddy Ebsen, Sue Townsend, Max Ernst, George MacDonald Fraser, Teddy Sheringham, William Holman Hunt, Michael Fassbender, Camille Paglia, Brian Glover, Kenneth Tynan and - erm - Dr. Demento...
...it is the (gulp!) 65th birthday today of the lovely Miss Keren Woodward, founding member of house faves Bananarama!
No further excuse needed for a dose of cheer from the ladies themselves:
[Yes. It is a tribute to another great "house favourite" here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Hypnotic Tango by My Mine...]As it is a foreshortened week thanks to Easter, perhaps I should be saying Thank Disco It's Thursday(?)!!
Have a great extended weekend, dear reader!
Hoorah! The weekend's almost upon us - and, for a change a) we have no events, exhibitions, parties or anything planned; and b) the forecast is for more sunshine!
I think a little celebration is in order - and since it happened to have been the (gulp) 80th birthday yesterday of the sole surviving Pointer Sister, Ruth Pointer, let's give the girls the spotlight to shimmy in, and...
...Thank Disco It's Friday!
Have a great weekend, dear reader!
Sigh. Yet again, the warm, sunny weather saved itself for midweek, and now we're heading to the weekend... it's raining!
It matters not - we still have two days away from this drudgery, and a party to plan! To get us in the mood, here's a fab 80s dance classic from tomorrow's birthday girl [from back in the day, 38 years ago, when she still had her own face!].
Leg-warmers and day-glo at the ready, girls - Thank Disco It's Friday!
I feel the night explode
When we're together
Emotion overload
In the heat of pleasure
Take me I'm yours
Into your arms
Never let me go
Tonight i really need to know
Tell it to my heart
Tell me I'm the only one
Is this really love or just a game?
Tell it to my heart
I can feel my body rock
Every time you call my name
The passion's so complete
It's never ending
As long as i receive
The message you're sending
Body to body
Soul to soul
Always feel you near
So say the words i long to hear
Tell it to my heart
Tell me I'm the only one
Is this really love or just a game?
Tell it to my heart
I can feel my body rock
Every time you call my name
Love love on the run
Breakin' us down
Though we keep holdin' on
I don't want to lose
No i can't let you go
Tell it to my heart
Tell me I'm the only one
Is this really love or just a game?
Tell it to my heart
I can feel my body rock
Every time you call my name
Tell it to my heart
Tell me from the start
Tell it to my heart
Tell it to my heart
Tell me from the start
Tell it to my heart
Never make it stop
Oh take it to the heart
Tell it to my heart
Tell me I'm the only one
Is this really love or just a game?
Tell it to my heart
I can feel my body rock
Every time you call my name
Tell it to my heart
Tell me I'm the only one
Is this really love or just a game?
Tell it to my heart
Have a great weekend, peeps!
Timeslip moment again, dear reader...
We've been deposited with a bump by a Trimaxion Drone Ship forty years ago in the distinctly alien world of 1986 - the year of Chernobyl, the controversial Diego Maradona "Hand of God" goal that won the World Cup for Argentina over England, the "tombstone" AIDS awareness campaign in the UK, Neighbours, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh, the Westland affair, The Golden Girls, Abu Nidal, Andrew and Fergie's wedding, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Suzy Lamplugh, "If you see Sid, tell him", Casualty, the kidnap of British journalist John McCarthy in Beirut, Gary Lineker, the "Zammo Maguire" heroin addiction storyline in Grange Hill and "Just Say No", Top Gun, the Iran-Contra Affair, Russ Abbott, Desmond Tutu, "Den and Angie" in Eastenders, the US bombing of Libya, "Get away from her, you bitch!", the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games, Jeremy Bamber, Crocodile Dundee, the Cameroon lake eruption that killed 2000 people and hundreds of animals, Colin Baker as Doctor Who, and the so-called "Big Bang" deregulation of the London Stock Exchange
It was the year Rafael Nadal, Jamie Bell, Lady Gaga, Richard Madden, Charlotte Church, Robert Pattinson, Usain Bolt, Kit Harington, Jenna Coleman, Ellie Goulding, Laura Carmichael, the M25 Motorway, the Mir space station, Comic Relief, the Fox Broadcasting Company, Pixar and Phantom of the Opera were all born; and James Cagney, Pat Phoenix, Wallis Simpson, Cary Grant, Elsa Lanchester, Phil Lynott, Hylda Baker, Christopher Isherwood, Anna Neagle, Robert Helpmann, Benny Goodman, Ray Milland, Lady Diana Cooper, Alan Jay Lerner, Harold MacMillan, Peter Pears and Hermione Baddeley all died, and the Greater London Council and the six Metropolitan County Councils were abolished.
In the news in February of that year? Britain was in the middle of a "big freeze", with heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures; after an absence of 76 years Halley's Comet returned - and was a bit of a "damp squib" [I remember spotting it in a break in the clouds, and it looked like a smudgy fingerprint on glass]; the Wapping strike over digitisation of newspapers became a near-riot; President "Baby Doc" Duvalier of Haiti and President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines were both deposed; Mikhail Gorbachev introduced his Glasnost and Perestroika [openness and transparency] policies; Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated; the UK signed the Single European Act aimed at creating a single market; and we bade a fond farewell to Dandy Nichols, famous as "Elsie", long-suffering wife of "Alf Garnett" in Till Death Us Do Part. In our cinemas: Muppets Take Manhattan; Rocky IV; Spies Like Us. On telly: Blackadder II; The Colbys; Catchphrase.
And what of the charts this week in '86? Billy Ocean held onto the top slot for a second week (and would stay there for another two) with When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going [helped a lot, no doubt, by it being the theme song for The Jewel of the Nile, and the presence of the film's stars Danny DeVito, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as backing singers in the video]. Making up the rest of the Top Ten: Whitney-fucking-Houston, one-hit wonders Double (The Captain of Her Heart), A-Ha, The Damned, James Brown, Five Star, (ahem) Nana Mouskouri and (ahem, again) Su Pollard were all present and correct.
However, this song [only held off the top slot by the success of Billy and his chums] was at #2 - a re-release, no less. It's one of my favourite of Our Glorious Leader's choons!
FORTY-fucking-years? Where did they go?!
Among another assortment of celebrants, including Alan Alda (who blows out 90 candles on his cake), Colette, Acker Bilk, King Henry VII (Henry Tudor), Jackson Pollock, Sir John Tavener, Harry Corbett (creator of "Sooty"), Ronnie Scott, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Olympic champion Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, Sir Roy Clarke (the genius behind Keeping Up Appearances, Last of the Summer Wine and Open All Hours - thankfully still with us, aged 96), Nick Carter, Frank Skinner and Elijah Wood, it is the 70th birthday today of a true "one-hit wonder", only really known outside his native Germany for this Bowie tribute way back in 1983...
An inspiration for (the far more successful) A-Ha, perhaps..?
Viele glückliche Rückkehrer, Peter Schilling (born Pierre Michael Schilling, 28th January 1956)!
Another very odd week crawls to its inevitable demise. I have found myself feeling a bit like a prisoner, working from home [a thing I hate, and never did before the pandemic arrived in 2020]. Today I feel so "stir-crazy" I am finally going to venture into the office (now the rain and murk has stopped, for a while at least). Woo-hoo.
Just one day more, and it'll be time to breathe again...
To prepare ourselves for the weekend ahead, we need to get into more of a party mode - so let's apply the "super-gloss" hair gel, dig out our best padded shoulder floral print jackets (with clashing shirts, of course) and a little touch of diamanté, and boogie on down with Midnight Star [whatever happened to them?]. Thank Disco It's Friday!
Have a good weekend, dear reader!
As is its wont, BBC Radio 2 has been going overboard over the last couple of weeks to recognise the arrival of the new year 2026 by going backwards, marking "all the sixes" - 1966, 76, 86, 96 and even 2006 in especially-themed shows.
As it's the end of another week [albeit a very odd one for me after my leg operation on Monday, having yet to set foot outside the front door, and being signed-off work], let's bring to the fore, shall we, a remarkably catchy number that I hadn't heard in ages, until it re-emerged into my conciousness courtesy of one of those "single-year-focused" shows.
From this week forty years ago in 1986, here's a song that just about encapsulated the exact words I would have been saying to any man with a dick and a pulse at the time...
Thank Disco the 80s It's Friday!
Have a good weekend, dear reader...
Huzzah! The weekend is in sight, and for that I will be extremely grateful! It's horribly grey and grizzly out there, with torrential rain forecast and more to come, but who cares? We won't be in work, and that's the main thing...
Following the sad news that the very handsome Richard Darbyshire, former lead singer of Living in a Box, died earlier this week (aged just 65!), there is only one song that I could possibly play to get the party started - one of the catchiest songs of the era.
Thank Disco The Eighties it's Friday!
Have a fab weekend, dear reader!
Shocking news - Dave Ball, the maestro behind the music of Soft Cell (and later The Grid) has died, aged just 66!
Very sad - I met him a couple of times, thanks to an old Polari chum Celine Hispiche who sang in a band of which he was a key member, and he was gruff-but-friendly, as one might expect.
By way of a tribute, this:
I'm waving goodbye - to Mr Ball, and to the end of an era...
Our Great Earth Mother, our Patron Saint of Sleaze - Divine would have been 80 years old yesterday!
On this Tacky Music Monday, if this doesn't wake you up, nothing will...
Cheap, cheap
I was born to be cheap, cheap
A child no mother could keep, cheap
As sure as there's trash
I was born to be cheap
I was born to be helpless, I was born to be cold
I was born to never do what I'm told
I was to be shallow, wasn't born to be deep
Of all the things I was to be cheap
Cheap, cheap
I was born to be cheap, cheap
A child no mother could keep, cheap
As sure as there's trash
I was born to be cheap
I was born to be crass, a loud brassy tart
No one can accuse me of having a heart
I was born too fast
I don't do it twice with anyone, GET CHEAP!
Cheap, cheap
I was born to be cheap, cheap
As I'm walking down the street, cheap
I'm always too much
I was born to be cheap!
I think I'll have those lyrics recited as my eulogy when I go.
Have a good week, dear reader!
Divine (born Harris Glenn Milstead, 19th October 1945 – 7th March 1988)
PS
Happy Diwali!
From an article by Mark Holgate in Vogue:
It’s hard to imagine, but Blitz (the bar), with its Dig for Victory World War II posters, kitschy red gingham tablecloths, and wooden bar sticky from spilt beer - faithfully recreated for the exhibition - wasn’t the most obvious place for a fashion revolution to happen, yet this sartorial Winter Palace, reimagined as Blitz (the club night) changed everything. If punk was a gob in the face, then New Romanticism was putting on a tiara and forgetting you were penniless. Its favoured look - theatrical, historical, bending your gender to whatever you wanted it to be, with the absolute emphasis on individualism - still resonates today.
It certainly does!
And so it was that Hils, John-John and I - "80s Kids", all - trolled off yesterday (Saturday) for swanky High Street Kensington to the Design Museum to see its new flagship exhibition, Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s.
Oh, the memories flooded in...
Among the hundreds of fascinating, and carefully-curated, items on show - including many from personal and private collections, never usually on display - were some fabulous outfits belonging to the original club-goers, such as leather garments owned by Steve Strange, a blue tartan suit designed and worn by Chris Sullivan, an outfit designed by David Holah (the co-founder of Bodymap) for Lesley Chilkes, and ensembles created and worn by Fiona Dealey (a major contributor to the exhibition):
There were cases full of flyers, scrapbooks, photos and memorabilia of that formative era - not least Gary Kemp's handwritten lyrics for the club's "house band" Spandau Ballet's To Cut A Long Story Short [see here for that!], as well as individual focus on some of the influential style magazines - including first editions - that emerged out of this uniquely stylish era, such as The Face, i:D, New Sounds New Styles and the rest.
Back to the fashions... A selection of the fantabulosa hats created for Blitz regulars by a fellow patron, milliner Stephen Jones were prominently displayed alongside photos of their inimitable wearers:
Darla Jane Gilroy's outfit from when she joined Steve Strange and fellow regulars Judi Frankland and Elise Brazier in David Bowie's Ashes to Ashes video was among my faves on show - and we had gasps at seeing the covers of some of the most familiar LP and 7" singles that made the early '80s so special on display on one bookshelf! [How many do you recognise/did you own, dear reader? I still have a number in my collection to this day...]
The recreation of the club itself - with some cleverly-done animation from original photos that made it appear as if the familiar punters were actually dancing to the music played by a similarly-AI-generated Rusty Egan in the DJ booth - was brilliantly executed, and some of our most-treasured classics of the day were playing, here and in the audio-visual area of the exhibition.
Here are just a few of the tracks that were playing yesterday, as they were back on the dancefloor at the Blitz:
Also featured was a rather faboo excerpt of a film that brings together many of the key players from the Blitz club - including Boy George, Marilyn, Gary Kemp, Midge Ure, Andy Polaris, Robert Elms, Princess Julia, Stephen Jones, Darla-Jane Gilroy and Michele Clapton - to talk about their own recollections, which I found fascinating:
[NB you can view the whole thing here]And the last word, of course, goes to Rusty Egan:
“I don’t think Blitz invented the 80s.That was Margaret Thatcher. She was the one who created Del Boy with his Filofax. What I did was to put together a soundtrack, where everything fell into place.”
Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s is on at the Design Museum until 29th March 2026. Don't miss it!
Watch the promotional trailer:
More Blitz Kids/New Romantics here, here, here and here and here - and our visit to a similar exhibition from the early 80s club scene, Leigh Bowery's Taboo here.
It's another snippets post today, dear reader:
[click any pic to embiggen]
Fab safety gays!
And the weather? Sunny, but the wind's a bit chilly.
With the sad news that co-founder member of one of my personal fave 80s synth-pop bands Blancmange Stephen Luscombe has ascended that neon-lit, dry-ice-and-poppers-shrouded stairway to the great "Some Bizzare" stage on Fabulon - let's wallow [and I need very little prompting to delve into my 1980s heyday, bien sûr] in just a few of the band's most memorable musical moments, shall we?
[Don't tell John-John, but I prefer their cover version to Abba's original!]
RIP, Stephen.
Among another assemblage of "names" including Karl Lagerfeld, Siobhan Fahey, Colin Firth, Guy Ritchie, Ryan Phillippe, "Diddy" David Hamilton, José Feliciano, Arnold Palmer, Beryl Cook, footballer Jack Grealish, Sir Thomas Allen, Don Powell from Slade, Judy Geeson, Margaret Trudeau and (ahem) Johnnie Fingers, it's the birthday today of Miss Carol Decker [not pictured above]!
With her band T'Pau, she ruled the airwaves in the 1980s, with "karaoke classics" such as these:
Don't push too far, your dreams are china in your hand
Don't wish too hard because they may come true
And you can't help them
You don't know what you might have set upon yourself
China in your hand
Memories, indeed.
There's probably not a single person from my generation who couldn't sing along to that..!
