I think the most difficult question to answer is, what is your favourite song – what is your favourite record and who is your favourite band or artist..? I love exploring music, and I have delved into genres. I love to discover a new sound, something refreshing not matter have diverse and no matter how unfashionable that it maybe. 

The search continues, and there are many musical avenues to stroll down. Here follows what I consider to be my ‘Top of the Pops’, in no particular order, and what is more import, why…and what the inspiration is behind that choice.

Most would pick ‘Blue Monday’ as their particular favourite track. It is a close call for me between the to, but I tend to favour ‘One Faith’, only because I used to mime to the video as it played on the huge screen at the Powerhouse in Birmingham. Back in the late eighties, ever Wednesday evening we used to meet up at the Duck Inn on the Hagley Road. Drink pints of directors, and then at closing time race into Birmingham. Closing time in those days was ten thirty, which gave us enough time to get to the Powerhouse before eleven, which was great as it was only a pound to get in. Any later it would be two pound fifty.

Wednesday evening was always alternative night, and attracted a bizarre array of Goths and punks - students and weird people, some that slept during the day and came to life at night, and were afraid of the light and crucifixes. It was not an evening to dress to impress either. I once got turned away for wearing a white shirt, black leather jacket and jeans. I was told that I was too smart…The women all wore black and the latest fashions from the house of Ann Summers. While the Goths wore long gowns, and wore make up straight from and Mona Lisa paint by numbers set. Then you had the fans of the ‘Fields of Nephilum’ who rolled up in dressed in black, long trench coats, cowboy hats and covered from head to toe in talcum powder, and staggered about like the resurrected dead from a spaghetti western, clutching glasses of snake bite. Clint Eastwoods worst nightmare. 

The music was gothic, alternative, reggae and heavy metal. No ‘Jive Bunny’, ‘YMCH’ or ‘Grease’ mega mix here, and ‘One Faith’ was as about up beat as it got. Other than the ‘Time Warp’, which led to frenzied activity on the dance floor? But it was one of those numbers that was allowed, given New Orders alternative roots. Two huge video screens hung either side of the stage and it was here that the wonderful video was screened, and beneath it I mimed the actions.

The late eighties you could say was my gothic period, and bands such as the Mission – the Cult and All about Eve attracted my attention. As ever, I shunned the mainstream of outlandish hair styles and make up which was the aftermath of the New Romantics. The music scene was heading to a new technical age of electronic and sampled dance music. Plastic pop and manufactured bands would roam the earth, but I had a need to stick to my roots of music, and keep it real, with real instruments and artists who could sing with out the aid of miming to a backing track…….