Pop songs conjure up a place and time. Even if they’re a bit crap. The kind of tunes your brain tortures you with when you’re lying in bed squirming about something stupid you probably said in 1997. Agadoo by Black Lace is a track as good as a time machine. Always has been, always will be. For good, for worse.

I was watching an episode of Top of the Pops from 1984, and there they were, with their mullet-lite peroxide blonde trims looking like the Scandinavian Chuckle Brothers. Alan Barton is wearing a knitted jumper with circular patterns, and light coloured jeans. Guitarist Colin Gibb is in a white denim jacket cut off at the arms, with sunglasses, and black jeans. They’re both walking from side to side and flicking a foot out, the same way your great aunt would dance to, well, pretty much any song at all.

The lovely beach and the sky…

The Eastgate Bar, in Ingoldmells, near Skegness, was as big as a school hall, and had a bar down all one side. It had a high wooden partition to encourage a queue rather than have the chaos of a six-deep free for all. Kids weren’t allowed at the bar, unless you were ordering a milkshake in the daytime. Dads would queue in silence, holding the glass they’d keep all night – it made the lager taste better, apparently. One hand in their pocket, shaking their change, fondling their car key. The look on their faces told a tale, they’d rather be anywhere else than here. ‘We could have been in Bendidorm…’ doing exactly the same thing.

The back of the Eastgate was mainly windowed, and in front of them were a row of arcade machines including Space Invaders. It disappointed me when I was finally tall enough to see the screen, after hearing such exotic sci-fi sounds coming from the box. That, and the artwork on the side, promised so much more than the crappy green pixels on display. But still, lads from Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Sheffield, united over this game, it would be in play all night. Records broken. The joystick, and buttons, sticky with sweat and crisps.

The Eastgate Bar was referred to as Mr Tutts’ in our family. Named after, I believe, the magician who returned every summer. Real name unknown. Thinking back, Mr Tutts had these dead eyes, the enthusiasm long gone. The same look on his promotional photographs – posing with a dove on his arm – that he signed as a prize. There’s only so many times you can hand a magic wand to a kid, and act surprised when it goes floppy when your back’s turned. 

The smile of his assistant (his wife) revealed her disdain at entering a cupboard only to ‘disappear’ (she wishes she could have). Or, folding herself up in that box to be sawn in half… again.  I’m sure there was a happier time when they packed in their jobs in teaching, or in a bank, and decided to pursue their love of magic and entertainment. Maybe there was a part of them that thought they’d end up on New Faces with Marti Caine, and then the Des O’Connor Show, or Wogan. Spending their winters in the Canaries, or even the Bahamas. As it was, they spent the holiday season on England’s east coast, doing the same act night after night after night. Perhaps they made just enough to get through the lean months, before starting all over again.

Once Mr Tutts finished his act, he’d start up the disco, get the lights going, and mumble something into the microphone. The air would be thick with cigarette smoke, and the windows dripping with condensation. ‘Burning up and sopping wet’, faces blue, red, and sticky from sugary drinks, a hundred kids would pile on to the dance floor, and Mr Tutts would slap on Agadoo, and then disappear for a few minutes while he sank a pint and thought about his life choices.

Agadoo plonks me in a metaphoric DeLorean (or more relevant to eighties Nottingham, a Ford Cortina, a Flux Capacitor in the glove box), and transports me to the Eastgate Bar. Six years old, and messing up the moves our grandma had shown us in the caravan, mouthing something vaguely similar to the actual words… ‘Agadoo doo doo, push my apples up a tree, Agadoo doo doo push my apples, I need a wee.’