I was reading just recently how one of the members of that defunct boy-band Blue is now engaged to, and expecting a baby with, a longtime devoted fan. And how did this lady snare her idol…? in a very modern day way – she bombarded him with racy pics of herself on his MySpace page until he succumbed to temptation.

Boy, did her efforts pay off!

It was very different when I was a ‘fan’; as a very young girl (and I do mean ‘very’) my heart belonged to none other than the Bay City Rollers – those tartan terrors from Scotland and I idolised them just as millions of other very young girls did back in the 1970’s.

Of course we all were convinced that each one of us was absolutely destined to marry either Les, Eric, Derek, Alan or Woody – the only depressing prospect was that millions of other very young girls all thought the same thing.

We all wrote cute letters to our favourite Roller; if you liked Woody (as most of the fans did) you knew you had write an especially cute letter to him if yours was to convince him that you were meant for him; if you liked Les you were a bit of a rebel as Les was the bad boy of the group ( or so they said ); if you liked Alan or Derek (the brothers) you were normally one of the older category of fans – at least 15 or 16.

But if you liked Eric – as I did – then you were my worst enemy. I wrote letters to Eric, via one of those dubious fan clubs which abounded back then – they took your parents cheque for $10.00 and all you got back was a poster…and nothing else. But you did not care – you were official and you just knew Eric was actually getting your letters placed in his hand and was reading them and thinking what a great girl you were.

We all thought it was sooo cute that Eric and Woody shared a house; of course, they wrote their songs together so why not?…

Yep, I went to the concert in Sydney in ‘76 – I screamed, I cried, I even tried to faint like all those fans at the concerts in England were supposed to have done. But all we got out of the experience was a case of tinnitus for a week due to the deafening screams and a piece of tartan off the floor which someone else had dropped.

I never heard a note they played, my beloved Eric resembled a zombie on stage and the worst thing of all…he never even looked at me…not once!!  big let down…I wrote and told him I would be holding a tartan teddy bear aloft to signal it was me in the crowd but he completely ignored me!

And I held my teddy bear much higher than all those hundreds of other girls did!

A few years down the line and I had grown out of Eric and the ‘Rollers so when I read somewhere that Eric and Woody were still playing house together I consoled myself with the thought that maybe he wasn’t such a great catch after all…

Shang a lang!