Made up by star’s honesty

HEARING about Steve Priest’s death last week, aged 72, was one of those moments when you stop what you’re doing and let your mind float back to the past. He was the bassist in the band Sweet, whose hits, like Wig Wam Bam, Ballroom Blitz and, of course, LittleWilly, featured prominently in my generation’s playground soundtrack of the early 1970s.

In a group not noted for its understatement, Priest was the most flamboyant of the lot. Whenever we saw him on Top of the Pops, he appeared to be performing beneath the entire contents of the case of make up from which the Avon Lady on her weekly calls sought to tempt my mum. Even David Bowie accused him of overdoing it, prompting Priest’s matchless reply: “I’m supposed to look like an old tart”.

It was that tongue-in-cheek excess we loved, not least Priest’s much mimicked falsetto line “We just haven’t got a clue what to do!” in another of their hits, Blockbuster – provoking millions of “is it a boy or a girl” parental observations. RIP, and thanks for the memories, Steve.

THE football season is sadly over for my club Bradford City after it and the other clubs in League Two unanimously indicated they wished to curtail this season.

But the Premier League restarts next week.

After the tens of thousands who

flocked into city centres over the weekend for the Black Lives Matter marches, why should those matches be played behind closed doors? Is it just because football fans – like those of us ghastly people who have had the temerity to go to the beach – are not as noble and principled?