Having another eighties moment

9:23am Friday 7th March 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan were pop's power couple when I started work for the Watford Observer. Back in the day, as I understand young folk now like to say when referring to the dark ages of the 1980s, this pair of squeaky-clean, impossibly toothsome, assisted-blond antipodeans topped the Christmas charts of 1988 with a frothy Stock, Aitken and Waterman confection called Especially For You'.

Rather memorably, the song included the lines "Now we're back, together, forever," which was a bit optimistic given that just a couple of years later Kylie had replaced her neighbour-friendly, girl next door persona for that of a peroxide blonde, leather-clad rock trinket adorning the arm of musical bad boy Michael Hutchence, while Jason was dabbling with something rather more psychedelic than Joseph's Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Yet more than 20 years later, despite genuine adversity in the case of Kylie's battle with breast cancer, and testing times - that's Jason chewing a kangaroo testicle on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here - they are still among our best-loved entertainers.

Style queen Kylie has never looked better, while Jason's star is ascendant once again in the soap heavens as he appears every Friday evening in ITV's innovative Echo Beach.

Actually, it's not just Kylie who is looking great these days. I was watching Richard & Judy last Friday (er I allow myself the occasional guilty pleasure of an afternoon free from the yoke of literature) and I have to say that when Jason Donovan popped up as their top interviewee I was quite struck by how fit and youthful he looked.

Obviously a busy filming schedule down in Cornwall suits him. He's not only toned and tanned, but he's managed to hang on to most of his hair - which is quite a feat considering all the bleaching and back-combing it must have endured during the 80s.

Looking back at clips of the video for Especially for You it seemed a foregone conclusion that Jason was destined to part company with his floppy fringe rather more quickly than with Kylie Minogue, but how wrong can you be?

Most refreshing of all was his attitude when subjected by simpering R&J to the syrupy, soft focus, 22-year-old video of his teenage self duetting with Kylie. Most of us would have run screaming from the room when confronted by an all-singing, all-dancing image of ourselves in our 1980s gory glory.

Actually, I'm pretty confident that nothing of the sort survives in the archives of Maison Cain, but if it does it will show something distressingly unattractive modelling an elbow-length bubble-perm and rather a lot of magenta blusher (and does anyone else out there remember a Miss Selfridges lipstick called Doris Karloff?) Anyway, Jason's reaction was rather sweet. Richard Madelely - a man who surely knows a lot about personal humiliation - was clearly hoping to induce a moment of toe-curling embarrassment for his celebrity interviewee, but instead he was thwarted by charm.

"You know, that really was a great record. And it stands up now," said Jason clearly warmly nostalgic.

"And doesn't she look great? She's a great girl." he added gallantly of his former squeeze.

I almost came over all misty-eyed and mushy myself. Kylie and Jason may not have lived happily ever after together forever, but perhaps something of the niceness' we all warmed to back in the day, when, fresh from a teatime soap opera, they stormed the pop charts armed with little more than cheesy grins and excruciating haircuts will always guarantee them both a soft spot in our affections.

Or perhaps, for me it was an 80s moment. I've been having quite a lot of these recently.

I reckon Jason was quite right in his appraisal of the oeuvre of record producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman. They really did produce great, big, bouncy dance records.

As a supercool young adult (albeit one with a really bad perm myself) I invested a lot of money on singles and albums produced by bands like Joy Division, The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths you can see where I'm going with this, can't you?

Why is it then that these days, the records from my cutting-edge 1980s collection that receive the most outings on the turntable are by bands like Queen, ELO and Supertramp?

Once it was quite beyond the pale of fashion to admit to liking any of the above, but now I that I don't have to keep up a façade of achingly tasteful disdain I can admit to my trash pop affections without fear of retro reprisal.

Recently I even bought a CD of Stock Aitken and Waterman's greatest hits. Rick Astley, Mel and Kim and Hazell Dean are currently regulars on my iPod.

"How potent cheap music is," mused Eliot, a character in Noel Coward's Private Lives. He was absolutely right.

While I'm riveted by Ashes to Ashes every time an 80s song is segued seamlessly into the action I'm instantly transported back to my university halls of residence.

There I am in front of a mirror among a gaggle of panda-eyed girls wielding hairspray cans like lethal weapons.

The smell of Sunsilk Max-hold fills the air, mingled potently with the waft of Chloe layered with Lambrusco.

The year is 1983, gloves are fingerless, tights are footless and we are preparing for another incident-packed evening down at the student union disco, which will, no doubt, leave us legless.

At this point I'd like to say that it's the classic, seminal sound of David Bowie that sets me off down the Proustian route in search of temps perdus.

But unfortunately it's not.

It's Bananarama.

Delia Smith is another 80s classic currently enjoying a revival. Didn't you love her on Swap Shop?

As someone whose culinary skills can at best be described as challenged, I've always admired Delia's common sense approach. Her egg boiling recipe was designed for people like me.

I always thought she was reassuringly mumsy, or perhaps firm but friendly - a bit like my favourite long-suffering domestic science teacher.

So, it came as quite a surprise last week to read in an article written about her: "She goes to mass every day and then comes back and makes her secretaries cry."

I'd rather imagined that she came back and made them a nice trifle.