Autumn 1983, flicking through an eagerly anticipated brand new edition of "Smash Hits" magazine.
There, amongst the glossy pictures of Duran Duran and Wham! was an incongruous monochrome advert for a new single by a band I'd never heard of before called The Smiths. My 13 year-old self was intringued and I made it my mission to find out more about this band. That weekend, I took my pocket money (two English pounds!) to Probe records in Liverpool and bought This Charming Man.
The rest, as they say, is history. It was another 18 months before I got to see them live (at the Liverpool Royal Court Theatre, on the Meat Is Murder tour), but it was worth the wait. I even bunked off school on the day of the gig and waited outside the stage door all afternoon so that I could get my record sleeves signed when they arrived for the soundcheck. As it happens, I took the afternoon off work some 19 years later so that I could wait outside the very same stage door in the hope of getting my copy of YATQ signed. Unfortunately, thanks to some very effective security, that didn't happen!
I may be a 36 year old solicitor now, but I still feel exactly the same way now whenever I attend a Morrissey gig as I did when I was a 14 year schoolboy seeing The Smiths for the very first time. Forget Botox, it's Morrissey that keeps me young!!