Donny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Something very exciting happened. I’ve been to see the Osmonds.

I was innocently eating dinner, or as innocently as I ever eat dinner. My mobile rang. ‘Are you an Osmonds fan?’ my friend asked.
‘Are you at the pub quiz?’ I asked.
‘Can you name five Osmonds songs?’
‘Am I a woman in my forties?’
‘They come on in half an hour I have a spare ticket.’

My heart raced. It was only puppy love. I dashed upstairs and changed into my best flares, paper roses, shiny top and floppy peaked hat, grew my hair down to beyond my shoulders and broke out in a display of colourful acne. Crazy horses couldn’t keep me away.

Half an hour later I was sitting in the Cardiff International Arena with most of the mid-forties female population of the world. Waiting. In anticipation. In an anticipation only those who have known the unrequited love of the world’s premier heart-throb can anticipate.

We chatted to our mates and wondered if we had time to nip to the loo before they came on.

Soon the waiting became too much. We nipped to the loo. Then the waiting and lack of heart-throb became too much. Hysteria was setting in. We stamped. We clapped. We shouted ‘We want the Osmonds’.

And there, like a miracle, they were, all very many of them.
My friend shouted:
Alan!
Wayne!
Merrill!
Virl!
Tom!
Donny!
Jimmy!

I shouted:
Donny!

Strangely no one shouted:
Marie!

Much swooning and general middle-aged hysteria went on.Thus:


And it all made me realise that I had missed out a very essential part of growing up. As a teenager I never did the hysteria thing. And frankly thought the Osmonds a soppy, pathetic, time-wasting, drippy lot who were only good for dentistry adverts.

‘Donny I love you!’ I shouted. Hysteria is a lot better than it’s made out to be.