The Final Pick Of The Pops From 1986 And 1987 - Love Can't Turn Around, Jack Your Body, Animal, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Boy In The Bubble, Get Fresh At The Weekend, Human, Wonderful Life, The Way It Is...

Love Can't Turn Around - Farley Jackmaster Funk with Darryl Pandy on vocals. House music: Year Zero 1983 - the very beginning. 1986 - house music beginning to burst out. This is legendary - the very first house music hit in England.

More House - Jack Your Body - Steve 'Silk' Hurley from 1987 - simply fabulous. Gives me a happy glow even now as I teeter past my mid-fifties... not so bad getting older when you have music like this to bring the memories of youth flooding back.

 1986 and Bruce Hornsby and The Range railing against social injustice - beautifully. The Way It Is.

I'm not really a 'rock' man, but this sublime 1987 hit from Def Leppard pushed my buttons. Somehow rockin' but also dancey... Happy nights.

The wonderful Whitney Houston - with the ultimate feel good pop/dance hit. This was 1987 - and it's as good today as it always was.

Wonderful life - a gorgeous summer hit from 1987. A walk in the sunshine, weighed down by melancholy... Once again, I was having a crisis - the (then) love of my life had just walked out. This song suited me down to the ground.

Boy in the Bubble - Paul Simon, 1986 - from his Graceland album. This song tapped into a feeling I had at the time. There was a sudden onrush of new technology - either things just becoming affordable and widespread - like the VCR and microwave oven - or brand new launches like the mobile phone and the Apple Mac. The world was buzzing - and there were millionaires and billionaires and sophisticated weaponry and lasers in the jungle... Probably.

 It was a vibrant time, but it felt somehow frantic and topsy turvy. A very transient era - rather like my youth. Bright and shiny and fresh with loads of new things happening. But was the sudden onrush of technology going to turn out a good thing? I mean, can you imagine making a phone call while you are walking down the street?

Who was the boy in the bubble? David Vetter, born in 1971, died in 1984, who had to live his life in a highly sterile 'bubble' environment due to severe combined immune deficiency. And the baby with the baboon's heart? Baby Fae born in October 1984. She lived until November.

Get Fresh At The Weekend. Lovely Mel and Kim. I saw these two being interviewed by Andrea Arnold, who played Dawn, on Saturday morning kids' show Number 73 and could have sat down and joined in the chat. Down to earth English girls - cockneys in fact - with a great sense of fun (not like the characters in EastEnders at all!). I really liked them. And the more 1980s music banged and clattered, the more I loved it.

The Human League, Human. When Phil Oakey spotted those two girls dancing at the Crazy Daisy Nightclub in October 1980, a legendary alliance was formed. This song is beautiful - with a great twist at the end.

Coming soon, we trip back to 1985 (the first year of the second half of the 1980s) and 1984 (the last year of the first half of the 1980s) to discover The Man With The Power That Promised You The World...

Mel and Kim

Fun, love, money and hair. The 1980s loved them all. And the sparkling new hair products, mousse, gel and extensions. Kim recalls that Mel washed her extended hairdo and phoned her with an urgent warning: 'Kim! Don't wash it! It goes like a mattress!'

Mel and Kim Appleby were two young English sisters - cockneys to be precise. They scaled the heights of pop stardom in the late 1980s and we loved them. They were celebrated not just for their talent but for being two English black women (or women of colour or whatever the current politically correct saying is) who'd scaled those heights, but I'd long ago learned that English was not a colour, and I was simply bowled over by their music, dance moves and sparkling sense of fun.

I remember seeing them being interviewed by Andrea Arnold (Dawn of kids' show No 73) and they were so natural, down-to-earth and downright likeable I could have grabbed a mug of tea and joined them for a natter without feeling even remotely star-struck - not like when I met Percy Sugden from Coronation Street and was absolutely gobsmacked.

Mel and Kim made it big as part of the Stock/Aitken/Waterman starburst, although Mel was already a model.

The news that Mel had cancer was stunning. I associated the sisters with fun and dance and wonderful nights out, me splashing on the latest swanky aftershave, dolloping on mousse or hair gel, and my latest Miami Vice inspired finery.

And not tragedy.

The meeting of the two extremes seemed incomprehensible to me at the time. I struggled to get my head round it.

Now I still listen to their music at times, and dance and smile and remember the good times, but not without more than a hint of sadness. 

And I say...

God bless, Mel - and all the best, Kim. Thanks for providing the soundtrack to some lovely times. x