Saturday 5 July 2014

5. Who was your favourite band/singer as a teenager?

I can never tease a One Direction fan, or even a Belieber. When I was a teenager, I was madly in love with...


Bros.

Oh yes. I was obsessed with platinum blond twins Matt and Luke Goss and their brunet bass player friend, Craig (do you know, I have only just wondered whether there was a male version of 'brunette', and apparently brunet is it, but it looks...weird). And that's how little I thought about Craig, I just had to look up his surname, which is Logan.

My bedroom was festooned with Bros posters. I wanted chunky Doc Martens with Grolsch beer bottle tops instead of laces, just like the boys wore (even if I had no idea what Grolsch was). I wanted to rip and bleach my jeans. I danced around my room, singing, quite a lot (but I also re-enacted and sang large portions of Les Miserables...I was a fantastic Eponine).

We had just moved back to Australia from Singapore, and my best friend in Singapore, Suzie, was also obsessed with Bros. So we would send each other clippings from magazines like TV Hits and Smash Hits (which I don't think even exist anymore), and long rambling letters about how ace Bros were, about Matt's growls, about Luke's drumming, about how Craig never seemed to smile, and wasn't that a bit odd? This was pre-internet, of course, so you couldn't just go to fan sites or watch videos on youtube. You had to scour the trashy mags for any mention of your heroes and sit avidly in front of the TV on a Saturday morning, flicking between Rage and Video Hits, hoping that one of their clips would show, VCR remote in hand so you could record them if you were lucky (I told this to Anusha at church last week and she was astounded that such a time existed).

And get this - I even won a creative writing competition at a local bookstore by writing a short story based on the video clip of Cat amongst the pigeons. Yes that's right, kids. Your original fan fictioner, right here. (You'll be pleased to know that the book I got with the gift voucher from the bookstore was a lovely edition of Lord of the Rings. I wasn't entirely without hope.)

I was quite delighted to see Luke Goss as a baddie in Hellboy II. I don't think I remember anything else about that movie.

Here is I owe you nothing (it's not quite a rickroll because I'm telling you about it in advance and you have the option not to watch it, but it's a similar vintage). Don't ask me why I loved it. Words cannot explain (nor logic).

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