Teenage Crushes Never Die

After seeing Take That I remembered a piece I wrote about teenage crushes, I wrote it while on work experience at the Chichester Observer, it was printed on August 5 2010:

With the recent shock marriage of Robbie Williams to his girlfriend Ayda Field, I knew that around the country whole hosts of 20 and 30-somethings inner teenager's hearts were breaking.

This got me thinking about how our teenage crushes never seem to leave us.

When Take That reformed, the girls screaming uncontrollably and making a spectacle of themselves were not teenagers but women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, recapturing a simpler time before jobs, kids and mortgages, when the most challenging decision was whether to buy Smash Hits or Top of the Pops magazine.

When I was younger I was convinced I was going to marry either Robbie Williams or Jason Donovan.

It didn't matter to me that there were about 20 years older than I was, nor did it cross my mind I would probably never meet either of them. It took me until I was an older teen to realise this would never happen.

It seems women's belief in seeing the good in their crushes never falters.

Whenin the past couple of months it came out that pop's good boys Ronan Keating and Mark Owen had had extra martial relations, it took a while for people to believe it; you could see the heartbreak in seemingly-grown women's eyes.

Not only were some kicking themselvesit could have been them, but the image that both presented was one of the wholesome family man.

Pre-Ayda you could believe it is Robbie (the former womaniser) had kiss and tells revealed, but not Mark Owen, the baby-faced, innocent member of the band.

I can only imagine now that the girls lusting over Justin Bieber or McFly will in years to face the news they have got married, had kids, or had affairs in a composed unfazed manner, only to shed a tear in private.

Especially if they always lived in hope they would one day marry into the band. Never fear we have all been there.



I realise now as well that poor old McFly fans will face this sooner as Tom proposed to his girlfriend the other month and she said yes.