In 1981 I bought these crap Bowie trousers through a mail order advert in NME. They were really bad for cycling - you had to double clip them to stop them getting caught in the bike chain. They also had strange powers. Whenever I wore them out - to a pub or a disco - certain older heavy rocker lads would become angry. I never worked out whether this was because I looked like a controversialist twat who they wanted to punch or that they thought I was compromising the memory of the Thin White Duke.

In 1982 I passed these on to my best mate to let him get hit and bought a pair of Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft black leather trousers from the same mail order company. Strangely, these caused far less of a stir with the rockers, possibly because Whitesnake's David Coverdale sometimes wore leather trousers.