Kylie, Jason, and the School Christmas Disco of 1988

It was the final day of the middle school term before the Christmas break. I say middle school, but by 1988 the Three-tier education system in the UK was well into its decline. Basically, I’d almost completed the first two years of secondary school, but our building was a good mile away from the actual main site so the feeling of being properly grown up hadn’t fully kicked in yet.

What's left of the school in question. Image: Elain Harwood.

Historically, the last day of term would herald the rollout of the school disco, and even though we were approaching the end of the decade and technology had made huge leaps forward, our disco lagged somewhat behind and still looked like something out of the late 1970s. You might recall the type of DJ arrangement I mean. Two record players on a not-so-well disguised table borrowed from the canteen with large speakers on either side, and a rotating bubble pattern projected on to a crude backdrop. So ingrained are my memories of this setup, whenever I think of it, the opening notes of the Birdie Song start playing somewhere in the back of my mind.

On other less-grand occasions, the school disco was usually housed in one of the side rooms which could accommodate about 30 people, which was roughly the number who frequented the school youth club. The youth club was attended mostly by Drama students and the cool kids who wore Nike or Adidas trainers. I didn’t fit into any of those categories so never got the pleasure of experiencing it. But this was the last day of term and it was Christmastime, so the DJ had been given centre stage in the main hall. The decks looked woefully small in a room designed to hold more than 400 pupils, and you could barely make out the tinsel used to disguise the borrowed canteen table. And the tinsel wasn’t your Blue Peter Advent crown-level merch; it was tattered and frayed, possibly a Discount Store, “5 strips for 99p” special, which even your cat wouldn’t play with.

TV Land-level Tinsel

Formal lessons had been cancelled for the day and we’d been told that we could bring in any games or toys we wanted to play with from home. I didn't have any toys that were in working order because I had a habit of dismantling them and using the parts to try and create more important things such as time machines or hover boards, and I didn't think anyone would appreciate me bringing in one of the high-powered peg guns I'd been working on. Toys such as Perfection or Simon weren’t toys to me. They were component kits waiting to be reworked into parts of a missile launch system or something more devastating.

The 1980s electronic game, Perfection.

The 1980s electronic game, Simon.

Now I don’t know how they got it into school, but someone had managed to get a 6 X 3 ft snooker table into our classroom. There was also a Yamaha synthesizer which looked suspiciously like the ones in the music department, and a range of classic games such as Kerplunk, Operation and Monopoly. Thinking about it now, the snooker table might well have belonged to the school youth club. It was no great mystery that many of the pupils at our school were from poor households, so things such as non-uniform or bring your own toys in days would often highlight the division between the haves and have nots. I did have Kerplunk at home, but I’d used half of the balls as ammunition for my catapult, and most of the pointed sticks testing some form of blow / dart gun.

Toys aside, just being able to freely roam the school corridors felt like a gift in itself. We could go from room to room and play with whatever we found in them. It was also a Roman Catholic school, so huge efforts had gone into constructing various nativity displays and wintry scenes depicting hymns and Christmas Carols such as the Holly and the Ivy and Walking in a Winter Wonderland. Glowing fairy lights adorned the corridors, but back then they were nothing like the disposable and efficient LED versions we use today. They were much more of a heavy-duty industrial affair requiring 240-Volts to power them, and they generated a lot of heat. They would often break and could easily give you a belting shock if you didn’t know what you were doing with them. They were also made out of glass and had a tendency to explode.

Christmas fairy lights from the 1980s.

So, there I was at the school Christmas disco of December 1988. My imaginary girlfriend at the time was the Australian actress and singer, Kylie Minogue. I hadn’t been following the TV soap Neighbours for very long because (as was often the case for me), I was always a little bit late to the party when it came to catching on to the latest things. I'd never see new films as soon as they hit the cinema, never got the latest toys or clothes as soon as they came out, and I always lagged behind the latest fashions and trends. My parents were dubious when it came to the power of advertising. If you resisted the temptation of going along with the crowd for a couple of months, then you would still eventually get the items you were after (or a dodgy replica), but for a fraction of the original price.

Now in all honesty, Kylie’s portrayal of Charlene Robinson, a trainee mechanic covered regularly in engine oil and hidden beneath a car, didn’t initially float my boat. (If I met Kylie Minogue covered in engine oil now, my unreasonable and naive 1988 standards would be significantly adjusted). But when record producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman got hold of her and branded her with the girl next door image, or what I would come to refer to as, Kylie Mk 1, I was hooked. Stock, Aitken and Waterman music ruled the charts in the late 80s. Some of the older kids scoffed at their tunes quite a bit, but at the time (and still to this day) I thought SAW were song writing geniuses, musically and lyrically, and I feel no embarrassment whatsoever saying so. “And if dreams were wings, you know, I would have flown to you” speaks to the soul somewhat differently than, “Hit me baby, one more time” or “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo” does.

Charlene Robinson’s on-screen marriage to Scott Ramsey played by Jason Donovan, drew one of the biggest audiences in UK TV history (20-million), but even at a young age I knew that they were just characters. In real life, I suspected that Kylie and Jason weren't really a couple, so I was still in with a chance. Perhaps off screen they didn't always get along, like Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting, or Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean? Either way, I'd joined the Kylie fan club and had the life-sized poster on my bedroom wall of her wearing the black leather jacket and the watch skirt.

Kylie Mk 1 wearing black leather jacket and watch skirt.

Our relationship was getting serious, and there was no doubt in my mind she would realise this when she saw the nervous yet confident handwriting on my fan club application form. So imagine my shock when an hour into the school Christmas disco whilst playing snooker in my form room, a classmate came in and asked me whether I'd heard Kylie and Jason's new song.

“What song?” I snapped, the jealousy forcing me to miss an easy blue into the middle pocket.

“Especially for You,” she laughed, the irony completely lost on me. It was no mystery to my classmates that Kylie and I had something going on. Well, I had something going on, but I was certain it would only be a matter of time before Ms Minogue confessed reciprocal feelings.

“Are you sure you're not talking about Suddenly by Angry Anderson?” I barked.

Angry did have a tenuous connection with Kylie because his song was played at Scott and Charlene’s wedding, but he wasn’t really a threat because I was much better looking than him. For a start, I had a good crop of hair and he was bald like the scary-looking bloke out of The Flying Pickets who made the, "Titsch, Titsch" sound in the Only You video.

“No”, my friend interjected. “Come to the hall. I've asked the DJ to play it in a bit.”

Suitably unimpressed, I shuffled sternly down the corridor past the, ‘Channel Tunnel is Coming’ poster and towards the main hall. “How could Kylie do this to me?” I thought. It was bad enough that the One Pound note had been withdrawn from circulation a few months earlier, but that was nothing in comparison. I knew that this Jason guy had been hanging around in the background, but in fairness I’d done a bit of that myself watching the cool kids from a distance in the playground at lunchtime. Jason wasn’t Kylie’s type, surely? For a start, he pranced around with is top off most of the time. What type of sensible woman would be into that sort of behaviour? “I’d like to see him try that in Newcastle in December,” I thought.

One Pound note.

After waiting patiently and tolerating a couple more, "This isn’t Kylie" songs, the DJ mumbled something or other about love into his microphone, before gently placing the record needle onto the vinyl. That was the moment I heard Especially for You for the first time, and reality struck home.

I had been dumped.

https://c20society.org.uk/building-of-the-month/the-solar-campus-former-st-georges-school-wallasey-merseyside