Hero for more than one day

It's always a shock to switch on the radio and hear that someone who seems always to have been there has died. It's even more so when it's a pop star from our younger years, seeing how closely we relate to those performers whose music we identified with at the time. So it was this morning with David Bowie.

He was a massive star when I was a student, and there was always one song that would fill our disco floor: Jean Genie (a thinly disguised version of the name of the French writer Jean Genet). Here is a version of the song on TOTP from 1973, thought lost until a cameraman found it among his personal collection a few years ago. Predictably, the BBC had wiped the original. Here he is with the great guitarist, the late Mick Ronson. Unfortunately I never him saw live, but this live performance gives some idea of how dynamic his concerts must have been.