Black Lace

Black Lace emerged in 1973 as a quartet from Ossett in Yorkshire, assembled by Steve Scoley, Terry Dalton, Colin Gibb and Alan Barton. For several years the group slogged through pubs and northern working-men’s clubs before landing an unlikely national platform when Britain selected them for the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest in Israel. EMI issued their entry “Mary Ann,” which climbed only to number 42 at home and placed seventh on the night, well behind the winning Israeli entry “Hallelujah” by Milk & Honey.

After that setback Gibb and Barton pared the lineup to a duo yet kept the Black Lace name, searching for a viable commercial direction. They located it in the Spanish resort discos where the track “Gioca Jouer” was popular; recast in English as “Superman” and released on the independent label Flair, the single climbed into the British Top Ten in late summer 1983. Its participatory routine—movements mimicking sleep, a sneeze, hair-combing and an arm-outstretched “flying” pose—quickly caught on at home as well.

The pair repeated the formula with another holiday-floor staple, adapting the Sargossa Band’s Moroccan hit “Agadou” into “Agadoo.” Issued in 1984, the record became one of the year’s biggest sellers despite widespread critical disdain, its choreography built around the commands “push pineapple, shake the tree, grind coffee.” At Christmas the same year “Do the Conga” also reached the Top Ten, followed in 1985 by the further party singles “El Vino Collapso,” “I Speaka Da Lingo” and “The Hokey Cokey.”

Telstar, the television-advertising specialist, issued the album Party Party 16 Great Party Icebreakers, which collected the duo’s hits alongside such covers as Ottawan’s “Hands Up (Give Me Your Heart),” the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” the Sweet’s “Wig-Wam Bam,” “Simon Says,” “The Bump” and the Tweets’ much-derided “The Birdie Song.” A more solemn track, their version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” appeared on the same collection; under the collective name the Crowd it topped the chart in 1985 to raise funds after the Bradford City stadium fire.

Subsequent Telstar releases Party Party 2 and Party Crazy maintained the same tongue-in-cheek tone. The act’s self-aware buffoonery proved durable enough to survive the rise of gothic rock and indie guitar bands, even inspiring a 1986 Spitting Image parody, “The Chicken Song,” which itself reached number one. Colin Gibb’s departure after a conviction involving an underage girl left Alan Barton fronting the act with new partner Dean Michael. Barton later accepted an offer to replace Chris Norman in Smokie, eventually concentrating on that group and transforming it into a comedy vehicle; one result was the 1995 re-recording of “Living Next Door to Alice” with Roy “Chubby” Brown, retitled “Alice (Who the Fuck Is Alice).”

Rob Hopcraft stepped in as Barton’s visual and vocal double, allowing Black Lace to continue as a fresh duo on the nostalgia circuit. Barton himself perished on 23 March 1995 when the Smokie tour bus plunged into a ravine during a German hailstorm. Both the revised Black Lace and a solo Colin Gibb kept performing the old repertoire into the new century, Gibb basing his shows on Tenerife. In 2003 readers and critics polled by Q magazine voted “Agadoo” the worst song ever recorded, ahead of “Orville’s Song” and “There’s No-One Quite Like Grandma.” Gibb died on 2 June 2024 at the age of seventy, weeks after declaring his retirement from the stage.