Neighbour

 

Teenage magazine cover in March 1982

The hard-working city of Sheffield in Yorkshire is not like The Holywood Hills you know. It's not even like Chelsea or West Hampstead down in London. Here, famous celebrities are very thin on the ground. Most Sheffielders are like me - unheralded nobodies who do not appear in magazines, films or TV shows. We are the shadow people.

However, a few famous people do live here and one of them is the musician, singer and record producer - Phil Oakey. He gained fame with a band called The Human League at the start of the 1980s. They had a massive worldwide hit with a song that Phil had written himself - "Don't You Want Me?" As a reminder, listen to the YouTube video at the bottom of this blogpost.

Nowadays, he still lives in Sheffield just a stone's throw from this keyboard -  and I mean that quite literally. I just looked out of the window between the houses across the street and behind them is the large pre-war house called "Orchardlea" which Phil Oakey made his home over thirty years ago. I snapped a picture of it today...

Phil Oakey celebrated his seventieth birthday last month. Still making music and occasionally touring with his band, he looks very different from the televisual fashionista of 1982 with that eyeliner and trademark lopsided hairstyle. Now he just looks like a regular bloke. He sometimes goes shopping in our local "Co-op" without shoppers or staff realising who he is but I have spotted him there a few times. 

Funny how he has never asked for my autograph - nor for a selfie with him. I expect he just wants to respect my personal space as they say.

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/sprgAze