I was surprised how much I missed the world you describe in Broken Greek . Inevitably, it seems like a more innocent time. Musically, the 1970s is the decade of David Bowie , Roxy Music , Kraftwerk , Sex Pistols , but you write lovingly about the stuff that was actually in the charts and on the radio: Boney M, Brotherhood Of Man, Racey… Do you ever feel like the music you’re hearing is explaining your life to you?” asks pop critic and broadcaster Pete Paphides early on in his perceptive coming-of-age memoir. He goes on to do just that, explaining his Seventies and early Eighties childhood through the music of the period – and he writes so beautifully about it that you keep having to listen to it afresh yourself. Facing a series of childhood crises, he is rescued by Abba, the Bee Gees and most profoundly by Dexys Midnight Runners, who “rode into my interior world like the cavalry”. Pete’s sensitivity certainly wasn’t inherited from his father. When Victoria has to go into hospital her husband, a typically macho Mediterranean, can’t even manage to hoover the carpet. Expecting him to do even the simplest household chores is like “expecting a guide dog to round up sheep”. As Paphides deftly records, the closest Chris can get to telling his wife he loves her is to admit that he needs her.

Pete Paphides interview: ‘Confessing my early music Pete Paphides interview: ‘Confessing my early music

You pretty much debunk the whole idea of ‘guilty pleasures’. What is there to feel guilty about celebrating pop music that makes your day immeasurably better? This coming-of-age story set in the Great Western Fish Bar in a Birmingham suburb is wonderfully told, but the meat in this dish is his parents’ tale. I’ve never read anything that tells the immigrant’s story with such clarity and tenderness. An exceptional coming-of-age story […] Pete Paphides may very well have the biggest heart in Britain’– Marina Hyde Exactly. Some of those pop records are really smart – there’s nothing accidental about them. They weren’t trying to be TS Eliot in the studio that day, but they’re a knowingly constructed fantasy for people who might be living difficult lives. And the people who bought those records knew what they were getting, they were allowing themselves to be moved in that way. So the book allowed me to be protective of that relationship. It also let me celebrate unusual entry points into someone’s work. I was able to write about how much Wings meant to me, for example, and the relative lateness with which I realised that John Lennon had actually been a member of The Beatles. There’s this idea that we’re in a critical world, there’s a “canon” and that’s the stuff we’re supposed to like.Do you sometimes feel like the music you are hearing is explaining your life to you?” he asks early on. Paphides clearly does, and so while he struggles to fit in, and looks up in envy to an older brother already consumed with a bustling social life, he gets lost in music, which he analyses with scientific brio. The principal of St Michael's, Tim Kelleher, said the school community is "absolutely devastated" over the deaths. Bright, sporting, academic men who had their whole life ahead of them and looking forward to this particular trip for months on end and the planning had been ongoing, not just in our school but in lots of other schools. Twenty-three years later, Edwyn Collins recorded an even more impassioned version as part of Channel 4’s A Song For Eurotrash TV special. Anyone who underestimates the power of walking along with their ding-dang-dong does so at their peril. Santa Esmeralda: Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (1977)

BBC Radio 4 - Broken Greek, by Pete Paphides

Shy and introverted, Pete stopped speaking from age 4 to 7, and found refuge instead in the bittersweet embrace of pop songs, thanks to Top of the Pops and Dial-A-Disc. From Brotherhood of Man to UB40, from ABBA to The Police, music provided the safety net he needed to protect him from the tensions of his home life. It also helped him navigate his way around the challenges surrounding school, friendships and phobias such as visits to the barber, standing near tall buildings and Rod Hull and Emu.

Santa Esmeralda: Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (1977)

I admit to falling a little bit in love with Victoria reading this book. Her childhood ambition to be an architect would never be realised and, following the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus, she knew they would never return to her husband’s birthplace. Still, she hopes that their sons will marry nice girls from the Greek Cypriot diaspora and eventually take over the business. But the sons have no intention of complying. At primary school Pete unilaterally changes his name from Takis. Both sons prefer listening to Billy Joel than Mikis Theodorakis. They have no ambition to work in the chip shop. Never have the trials and tribulations of growing up and the human need for a sense of belonging been so heart-breakingly and humorously depicted. Post-mortem examinations are to be carried out on Tuesday on two teenagers from Dublin who died on the Greek island of Ios. Judging by the response on social media, Broken Greek has really touched a nerve. You have become, to use the vernacular, a legend. And yet Santa Esmeralda’s debut hit – in particular, the full 15-minute version – is an astonishing synergy of handclaps, keening mariachi trumpets and deeply funky flamenco guitars, piloted to stratospheric heights by vocalist Leroy Gomez.