Sade: Smooth Operator

I'm a bit of a fan of soul and jazz; looking back, I suspect that this is the song that started it all.

My earliest memories of growing up in Flintshire in the early eighties involve an awful lot of rain. Leaden skies were the norm back then, it seems. That possibly explains why I feel quite comfortable and secure in dreary weather.

It was on one of those dismal, rainy afternoons in 1984 that I first heard this song. I was sat on the back seat of my parents' car, a rust-coloured Vauxhall Viva HC, constructed a short way up the road in Ellesmere Port. I recall being fascinated by this style of music that I had never encountered before. After all, up until that point, the sum total of my musical knowledge consisted of Neil Diamond, Showaddywaddy, and the theme tune to Postman Pat.

However, being a four-year-old, my listening skills were - quite understandably - not exactly up to scratch. It would be another seven years before I realised that Ms Adu was not singing about a "smooth umbrella".

Nevertheless, the seeds were firmly planted within my subconscious mind. Whilst it would be another ten years before they germinated, it is fair to say that, these days, my jazz and soul receptors are in full bloom.

Life has never sounded sweeter.