He was a good-looking bastard that David Essex, with his sparkly eyes and dimply grin, and in the mid-70s there probably wasn’t a girl in England who didn’t want him to be her boyfriend. He flirted shamelessly with that desire on his lovey-dovey ballad “If I Could” which painted a picture of romantic bliss in such humdrum, ordinary-bloke terms — going to the pictures, having tea, picnics in the park, riding the bus — that every “Jackie”-reading teenybopper who heard it was able to imagine what it would be like if David really was her boyfriend in real life. He’d meet her outside the school gates wearing a blazer like the one he had on in “That’ll Be The Day” and make all her mates really jealous, they’d hold hands walking down the street, sit in the back row of the pictures, and maybe go to the Wimpy Bar for a Knickerbocker Glory afterwards. It’s like a “My Guy” photo romance set to music, and for a picture of schoolgirl heaven you couldn’t beat this verse:

Could you picture us
On a Number 9 bus
To Canning Town
We two

I always really liked that bit, back then pop lyrics were all about Jean Genies, Telegram Sams and Crazy Horses and I’d never heard a big pop star singing about something as ordinary as taking a bus — if Ray Davies had been a handsome teen idol he might have written something like it. So while the song is soppy as hell I did find David’s Cockney barrow boy charm very appealing (even if he does lay it on thicker than marmalade sometimes) and could understand how all the girls could go so weak at the knees and moist in the knickers over it — and they really did, I saw him sing it live on the telly back then and when he got to the line “If I were a plumber would you love me?” you could hear the voices of a thousand swooning young ladies scream back “YES DAVID!!!!”

Hell, I think I wanted him to be my boyfriend too.

Download: If I Could – David Essex (mp3)