What's that smell?

Agadon't

photo of two dodgy-looking men with dyed hair BBC
Push pineapple up their bums. For anyone nostalgic for the '80s, the '80s included things such as this.

Has there ever been a time when it was safe to listen to music that hadn't been personally vetted? Certainly, there are always artists and genres that don't appeal to one's own tastes, that's a given. But even rap or Taylor Swift's relationship woes won't make me lose IQ points if I accidentally hear it.

And then there's the knowingly jokey party music, egregiously bloody awful novelty records. Some artists release the odd novelty in an otherwise straight career, hello David Bowie and The Laughing Gnome. Some are one-hit wonders. And then there are the thankfully few who make a career of them.

I guess they appeal to a certain type of listener. The sort of people who also watch cringe TV. And those are the people who lapped up Agadoo in the mid-'80s.

I absolutely hated that song, with a burning passion. The passage of forty years hasn't mollified my feelings, although I had completely forgotten about it until I read of the death of Colin Gibb, one half of Black Lace, a duo who were, unfortunately, not a one-hit wonder. Oh no, they churned out a whole barrel load of shit during a decade of sodomising the UK's music scene.

Black Lace were also known for songs such as Do the Conga, Superman, Hokey Cokey, Wig-Wam Bam and I Am the Music Man. But Agadoo was their biggest success, selling more than a million copies worldwide and becoming a staple of school discos and wedding parties.

Steven McIntosh, entertainment reporter, BBC News

And they competed in 1979's Eurovision Song Contest, which says something none too flattering.

Gibb sadly passed away just before he was to retire with his wife. But he died while still doing what he loved: reliving his former inglories in front of drunken holidaymakers in Tenerife.

El Vino Collapso indeed.

It's Agadoo all over again

photo of Dean Michael Betteridge Press Association
They call me Mr Pitiful: He may look like a kiddy diddler, but he's actually a benefit fraudster.

While reading up on Black Lace's litanous career I came across Dean Michael Betteridge, the self-styled Mr Agadoo. Or perhaps a self-styled Mr Agadoo, who knows? Either way, it's kinda pitiful.

Besides assuming the title Mr Agadoo, he also claims to have led a sixty-strong conga line while in prison for benefit fraud. Prisoners—hardened ones, not just wussy white collar criminals—are said to have inundated him with requests for autographs and for him to sing his eponymous greatest hit cover. He later declared: All the murderers and drug dealers wanted to be my mate.

Who said murderers and drug dealers aren't just big softies at heart? (lovedup)