Music is the best cure for the blues

IT WAS one of those times. I was worried about my best friend, in hospital with a broken femur in a year when she really hasn’t had good health.

The BBC news had become unbearable. Harry and Meghan were being given a prestigious award for what I regard as rank treachery and I couldn’t stand it. The house was cold. And it was raining so hard water dropped on my head as I sat at our dining table inside the conservatory… Gloomsville.

To avoid writing, I scrolled idly down my Facebook newsfeed, then — bliss! One of those ‘fan’ sites led me to YouTube, which immediately became a stairway to heaven. Boney M transported me to By The Rivers Of Babylon, The Ronettes sang Baby, I Love You, Diana Ross And The Supremes reminded me You Can’t Hurry Love… and there I was, sailing on a great wall of sound and forgetting to feel fed-up.

The Shirelles (Dedicated To The One I Love and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?), The Crystals (He’s A Rebel and Then He Kissed Me) and the Shangri-Las (my doomy favourite — Leader Of The Pack), The Temptations (My Girl and Just My Imagination)… Yes, I just sat there, clicking on one song after another, and loving the scratchy, shadowy old blackand-white footage and those doo-wop harmonies.

You hear a song like To Know Him Is To Love Him (The Teddy Bears, 1958) and remember your first sad little crush on that boy in school, while My Boyfriend’s Back (The Angels, 1963) reminds you of wanting (sorry!) a big, rough, tough boyfriend, like Marlon Brando in The Wild One. And I haven’t even mentioned Paul Anka, Buddy Holly, Eddy Cochrane, the Everly Brothers, Gerry and the Pacemakers and… er… The Beatles.

How I love the sounds of the late 1950s and 1960s — my era. How glorious it was to spend time with them all instead of working. Take my tip, folks: nostalgia is never a waste of time. The music of your youth is the best cure for the blues.

■ Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.