How we laughed: the golden days of Bananarama

Saying you don’t like Bananarama is like saying you don’t like summer or Marilyn Monroe — a sure sign of a misanthropist who thinks that being a wet blanket makes them interesting. OK, they never had a blazing talent — their three small, sweet pipings barely adding up to one decent voice — but they were one step beyond even the glorious girls of the Human League: Have-a-Go-Heroines dancing round their handbags, a karaoke of themselves.

Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin meet at infant school in Bristol. Their roustabout quality is evident when, as pre-teens, they engage in throwing bricks at each other’s ankles in a bid to skive off school — just think, they were behaving like that even before they were ever drunk! Then music hits them like a hormone. Recording the Top 20 every Sunday, they become aware of a world beyond the suspension bridge and escape to London, where Keren works in the BBC pensions department and Sara does a journalism course, where she meets Siobhan Fahey — the third ’Nan — who seems immeasurably sophisticated, being 21 and ‘living in sin’.