Funny what happens when you decide to do a tidy-up. That large box I kept tripping over was supposed to be full of 90s compilations, mostly repeating each other’s tracks, a hangover from the days when record companies were making their next round of easy money with greatest hits CDs of one sort or another.  Then shone a veritable diamond in the rough, which should have been shelved alphabetically like my thousands of other CDs. But you can imagine what it’s like shifting your collection from the Northwest to the (far) East…

The gem in question is Nothing Less Than Brilliant by ”60s comeback queen Sandie Shaw. Back in the day she was famous for singing a whole range of hits including ‘(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me’, ‘Girl Don’t Come’ – wonderfully covered by ex-New York Doll David Johansen (RIP) on his 1979 UK tour – and ‘Long Live Love’. We won’t dwell upon how she performed shoeless in stockinged feet…

But what would a Sandie record set be without The Smiths’ ‘Hand in Glove’, evoking memories of the time she was backed by those Mancunians on Top of the Pops, with shoes, but showing off a fine pair of knees below a stunning black leather dress before singing most of the song horizontal on the stage floor. Another artist younger than her that springs to mind is Lloyd Cole, Sandie covering his soulful ‘Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?’ on this same disc.

Although only eight years younger than Sandie, she and I were pals for a while. We met at some art exhibition in Mayfair, got chatting and she asked me where I was from.  When I replied Manchester, her companion, Sandie’s daughter Gracie, uttered the words “another one” clearly referring to an auspicious associate, The Smiths’ Morrissey. I took to  Gracie right away.

As for Sandie, this being my Hello! years, we continued to meet at events all over town, including the premier of the Kevin Costner film Dances with Wolves. I was with a female friend prompting Sandie to waste no time asking, “Are you two an item?”  Then came an invitation to the launch of her autobiography, The World at My Feet, in 1991. On spotting me at the venue, upstairs at the Groucho Club, the author handed me a copy and said “you’re in this!”

The last time we spoke was on Gary Crowley’s BBC London radio show early this century. I asked after Gracie and the singer revealed her daughter was now a mother herself. Well, Sandie hardly looked like the traditional granny. Then not long ago Shaw was awarded an MBE for services to music. These would have included another track on Nothing Less Than Brilliant, the charming ‘Monsieur Dupont’, which I would like to dedicate to another Mancunian, my old friend Jennifer, one of three sisters I partied hard with throughout my teens. So hard, in fact, that during one of them I threw up on their parents’ lawn at their house near prosperous Hale Barns.

My friend Peter Saville, of Factory Records fame, was incredulous shrieking “You’re turning into a punk, the Ian Dury of Hale!”, while the girls’ father, Isador or Charlie as he preferred to be called, accepted my apologies graciously. I’d known him all my life and knew he was a very creative businessman, opening one of the first chains of ‘fun’ pubs. He lived to a grand old age and is buried in the next grave to my brother, Robert, who wasn’t so lucky, passing away at 54.

I unearthed some fine photos of him while tidying up, too.

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