Things you think you'll never do.

I was five when David Cassidy shot to fame. I can (just) remember the Partridge family, but I have never ever got the teenyboppyer adulation which so many of my peers fixated on him in my formative years. And I've certainly never got into his music which is far too saccharine for my tastes (if you have to have your hair long sing, Bed of Roses or Dead or Alive. That will do it). So things I thought I'd never do included going to see a concert by David Cassidy.

However. My very lovely friend who bought us tickets for Stratford is a fan. And some months ago she bought two tickets to David Cassidy. She was having trouble (I wonder why) getting anyone to go with her, so in the interests of girly friendship (and quite frankly when someone buys you tickets to see David Tennant a girl will be obliged to go a very very long way to repay that act of extreme generosity), I said yes. I was rather assuming she'd find another fangirl to go with her, but sadly she didn't.

Having said all that, I also think it is beneficial from time to time to go and do/see things you wouldn't normally do to break down the barriers of prejudice that form in your mind. I have discovered in the last year that Neil Diamond who I had hitherto regarded as churning out the same cheesy crap as DC is actually fabulous. I loved his last album, have used Pretty Amazing Grace as a key soundtrack on my latest book, and even discovered I liked Love on the Rocks. So anything is possible...

I have to say I haven't had a Pauline conversion to DC's ouevre, NONE of which I even recognised (how odd is that? Going to a concert and not knowing a single hit, apart from the covers he did). I realise that this is partly because I was too young (I was 7 when he had most of his hits), partly because I didn't hear him at the right hormonal moment (though I was a late developer in that area - it was Sting who turned me onto music and by then I was 13), and partly because his hits are the cheesy crap I thought they were. However, it is quite clear that though I don't get it, thousands of women (mainly middle aged and older then me, phew) obviously do. So like Mills and Boon which I don't read or write, but I know lots of talented people who do both, I accept that David Cassidy is a strand of the music industry who entertains royally, which is just fine and dandy. I don't have to listen.

What I will say though, which was a bit of a revelation, was that 1) DC was highly entertaining, keeping up a constant patter throughout the show 2)He was quite daring (well if he wasn't full of bullshit anyway), taking himself out of his comfort zone and (allegedly) playing songs he hadn't rehearsed, trying new stuff for the first time and 3) he has a great voice, plays guitar AND even went and did the drums when his drummer (a really foxy chick) got up and sang Brass in Pocket.

So despite the fact that I have a rotten cold, didn't know a single song, and still think his hits are rubbish, remarkably, I had a really great time...