Best of Three

When I was in my early teens, the last thing I was interested in was boys or even pop stars. However, to have any credibility, you had to have a pin-up hero. If you wanted to appear normal, you basically had 3 to choose from: Donny Osmond, David Cassidy and Marc Bolan. (Never mind that Marc Bolan was a cross-dresser).

Every single girls' comic and magazine had a pin-up of one of these guys every single week. At school, you would constantly be stopped in whatever you were doing and confronted with "Who do you like - Donny, David or Marc?" That was your choice. It wasn't an issue that I liked Mr. Marks the Science teacher - he wasn't one of the Big 3 (which is actually what many of the magazines called them).

I didn't feel the slightest attraction towards any of them but I had to pick up one so I chose Donny Osmond. At least he was about my age! David Cassidy seemed kind of too old and Marc Bolan seemed kind of too weird. I hung every Donny poster I could find on my wall and his practically luminous teeth would keep me awake at night. I taught my little sister to sing "The Twelfth of Never" with me (actually I quite liked that song).

Fortunately this phase only continued for a couple of years. Marc Bolan crashed his car into a tree so he was out of the running and as we grew more sophisticated, we were allowed to like David Bowie, Elton John (little did we know), Alvin Stardust and Bryan Ferry to name a few.