new moon on monday, top news on tuesday

By Catherine Jones on Apr 8, 08 03:45 PM

"You know who I'd really love to see at the ECHO Arena?" I mentioned to ACC's Emma McHarrie during a visit to the waterfront site a few weeks ago. "Duran Duran."
And today my request has been answered in a way Jim never did manage to fix!
Ladies of a certain age (and yes, I include myself in that category as well - I discovered - as a surprising number of other women in the office) greeted the news the former wild boys would be appearing at the Summer Pops with something approaching the squeals we used to emit more than 20 years ago.
It's our chance to re-live the heady days of the 1980s, just without the pixie boots, string scarves and John Taylor-inspired trilby hats.

I hold my hand up and admit it, I was a card-carrying, mad Durannie in the early 1980s. No copy of Smash Hits was left intact, no inch of wallpaper was left uncovered, and no record was left unbought.
I knew all their birthdays (and at a push I could probably recall some of them now some 25 and more years on), I knew all the lyrics and I bored my family endlessly with random details about their lives.
Living in close proximity to Birmingham, myself and my similarly devoted friends would arrive on the doorstep of the fan club - next to the Rum Runner in Broad Street - with some request or other for autographs, once bumping into Paul Young on the way (he was at number one with Wherever I Lay My Hat, but that was only of passing interest to us).
And yes, I am also slightly ashamed to admit, I may also have turned up on their family doorsteps once or twice with hoardes of other 13-year-olds - and somewhere I still have the letters and Christmas cards Nick Rhodes' lovely mum Sylvia sent to me.
Alas, I can't recall why, but one day my devotion simply died away and down came the posters and away went the 45s and the books and the badges and the (eventually mouse-chewed) scarf.
Apart from the records, they were consigned to the bin many years past.
So it's with slightly more tempered, distinctly more middle-aged excitement, that I now greet the news the boys are back and I may get to see them live for the first time in 25 years.
This time I suspect I'll be singing rather than screaming along.