My Newest Favourite Thing: Ashes to Ashes

Actually, I have a confession to make - I don't actually like Ashes to Ashes as much as I liked Life on Mars. I think LOM was good drama, whereas A2A just seems to be taking the piss. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and it's still one of the best things on television.

The music is fabulous. This is more my era, and so far it's been great to hear Ultravox, The Stranglers, The Clash, Temple Tudor, Madness, OMD, Visage, Heaven 17... the list goes on, but it also includes Imagination, which proves that you can't have everything.

Besides the ludicrous plot lines and the dubious fashion, there is the strange and ethereal sight of a man dressed up in a David Bowie Pierrot costume constantly disappearing around corners or into public lavatories, which is more than slightly suspicious.

The dialogue is still smart and Gene Hunt is a perfect anti-hero, but a lot of the time you feel that the story is secondary and I picture the writers spluttering into their beer as they try and fit a slightly credible plot around a witty one-liner rather than the other way round.

But back to the fashion. As I said, this is more my era, and it makes me cringe in memory. I can remember Mrs Thatcher trying to privatise the entire nation and claiming there was no such thing as society, but I had managed to block out the fashion crimes until now. I am traumatised by the perms; my friend had one that made her look like a poodle, and my best mate asked her, in an attempt to be sympathetic, 'How long do you have to wait for that to grow out?' You know who you are. I shudder at the memories of pouty expressions, aided and abetted by lashings of lipgloss and smouldering blue eyeshadow - and that was just the men!

And I can't pull my eyes away from the off-the-shoulder tops, the bat-wing sleeves, the wide PVC belts and the tucked-in blouses. I watch through my fingers as I think, 'Oh my God, I used to wear that!' or in the case of the white leather bomber jacket, 'I used to want one of those!'

The sight of people wearing tight stonewashed jeans and slip-on tasselled loafers brings me out in a cold sweat. We used to call them casuals - they used to beat us up. Happy days.