Reenagh McCall

Director of Embrace Lingerie

I grew up in a cinema and worked alongside my family from a young age, so I tended to crush more on movie stars than singers. My walls had film posters of Tom Cruise in Top Gun (pre-scientology) and Pretty in Pink with Andrew McCarthy (pre-recovery), both eventually being replaced by Johnny Depp. One of the most influential songs of the 80s for me was Don’t You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds because it was in the Breakfast Club and that was the all-defining teen film of the 80s.

The one crush I did follow through on was Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet. I tracked him down to a hotel in Dublin and was trying to come up with a strategy to get in when he walked out of the foyer and got into a red sports car. As he swung by and hesitated for a second to get his bearings, I realised he had made the fatal mistake of having the passenger window down, so I took a leap of faith. Hanging through his window, and quite literally face-to-face with him, I said ‘Hi,’ and that was it.

I realised I really didn’t have anything to say, but he surprised me and asked if I wanted a lift home. I thought about mouths dropping on my road, but declined. After all, he had recently gotten engaged to Shirlie Holliman, from Pepsi & Shirlie, so there was really no future in it.

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Emma Hannigan

Author

I had a subscription to Smash Hits and used to cut out all the pictures of Nik Kershaw. I was in his fan club and had a stone-washed denim jacket with the lapels covered in button badges with his photo on the front.

He came to play a concert in Dublin when I was 12, in 1985, and my poor dad was given the job of accompanying me. Nik Kershaw was just over 5ft high and my brother teased me relentlessly that he was the size of a child. I queued outside HMV on Grafton Street to buy his new album Human Racing, then took it home and learned all the lyrics off by heart.

My older brother’s slagging my infatuation of Nik came to its peak when Mr Kershaw was injured on stage having been hit on the head by a boiled sweet. It’s true. I think it might have been shortly after that incident that I began to peel those posters off my walls and replaced them with images of Elvis Presley. My obsession with Elvis lasted a lot longer. Thankfully, my taste had clearly improved. I still love Elvis, but I can’t say I ever listen to Nik Kershaw. Still, his spiked hair and stone-washed jeans were the bee’s knees at the time.

The Summer Guest by Emma Hannigan is out now.

Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy

TD

My absolute favourites in my early teens were the Bay City Rollers. I first saw them on BBC’s Top of the Pops during a visit to my granny, who lived in Leitrim. I had never heard music like it, having been reared on traditional Irish music and playing the button key accordion in the school band. I adored them for their music, their gypsy-cut hairstyles and, of course, the tartan outfits. The heart throb was of course the lead singer Les McKeown, but I also carried a torch for Derek Longmuir. Being the only blonde, he stood out.

The hit songs that I loved were I Only Wanna Be With You, Bye Bye Baby and Shang-A-Lang. The 1970s were a lot different to today. Hearing their music involved tuning in to Radio Luxembourg on the radio or saving up to buy a vinyl single, which inevitably became scratched from playing it over and over.

I also saved up for British teen mags such as Jackie and Diana, which I would buy in Claffey’s shop and Ferbane, for pull-outs and pin-ups of my idols. My bedroom wall was adorned with them, much to my mother’s disapproval. I recently came across a documentary on music from the 1970s and there they were. All these years later, I remembered every word they sang and I joined in. Luckily, I was watching it alone.

Debbie Deegan

Founder of To Russia With Love

My first music crush was Donny Osmond. Partly because I wondered what all the fuss was about. We had heard of The Osmonds in the newspapers and on television, stuff about girls going absolutely hysterical at the sight of them. Then we saw them. We had never seen such white, straight teeth before and such clean-cut handsomeness.

Donny in particular was the dreamboat. And They Called it Puppy Love, he sang to all his adoring teeny bopper fans. Looking back it was so cheesy, but it appealed to us teenagers because he looked so wholesome and gorgeous. Any pocket money was saved up to splash out on the latest copy of Smash Hits or Top of the Pops, just so we could learn the words to their latest hit (this was long before you could just Google it) and hang a new poster on our wall. We also used a tape recorder to record their songs off the radio, which meant you had to spend a long time sitting beside the radio waiting for one.

I saw Donny recently on The Graham Norton Show. He is still as gorgeous and charming as ever. Graham swooned into his arms as he sang Puppy Love. Ah the memories.

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