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ITV attempted sitcoms in the 70s but with the exception of Rising Damp, none matched the hilarity of Corrie at its finest. I didn’t realise how much this was down to its queer origins, the foundations of which were laid by creator Tony Warren – those brassy, often ill-fated women, their often much weaker male counterparts.

Read about him in a Recommended Records catalogue, the label co-founded by Chris Cutler, drummer of Henry Cow and a man of formidable and very certain avant garde tastes. I bought Ra’s 1978 album Media Dreams on the strength of RR’s recommendation. With its tiny, put-putting drum machine and Ra’s wild, roving electronics it felt like visiting a distant jazz galaxy in a small craft with outboard motor.

Another Leeds Record Library acquisition and my introduction to one of the founders of European electronic music. The abstraction, the apparent “formlessness”, pieces which made no concession to tonality, repetition or melody absolutely fascinated me and bemused my family. Why couldn’t I listen to something sensible like The Sex Pistols?

Acquired from Leeds Record Library. My first point of contact with the Cologne group. I was immediate captured by the title track, which like Sun Ra, felt transporting, a release from the surly, rocky bounds of earth, sustained by a unique energy flow.

Bought a cassette of this from Schofields in Leeds. Saved up four weeks of paper round money to afford it. It wasn’t the first album I ever bought but the first as a self-declared serious music fan and reader of the music press, as discerning as I was lacking in pomposity. I can count on the fingers of one hand the better albums I have bought since.

This was the year he won the Heavyweight championship for a record breaking third time, avenging a shock defeat by Leon Spinks. It was his last hurrah. Along with Stevie Wonder and Martin Luther King, whose biography written by his widow Coretta I devoured this year, Ali made up for me a triumvirate of African-American heroism and brilliance.