The first time I heard Bowie it was ‘The Laughing Gnome'.

I was little. I loved it. Even at that young age I knew it was a bit cheesy but 'Here, what's that clicking noise? That's Fred, he's a metrognome?”, 'Where do you come from? Gnome-man's land”, all those awful puns, they made a small English schoolboy smile.

Or perhaps the first time I heard David Bowie it was on Top of the Pops, 1972, singing ‘Starman'.

I remember holding a small portable cassette recorder up to the television so we could listen to it endlessly and learn the words. That's what we did each week with the charts, which were bulging with glam rock.

English music was in the grip of Chinn-Chap dominance, glam acts whose songs were written and produced by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman.

Bowie had the extravagant looks, but was clearly on a whole different level. We discovered the astounding piano and musical complexity of ‘Life On Mars' and were introduced to Lenin in its lyrics (yes, we all thought it was about John Lennon).

‘Space Oddity' (the album) was reissued under that title and clearly there was more here in the strange long songs that concluded each side than your average pop single. Seven minutes of ‘Memory of a Free Festival'; ‘Cygnet Committee' clocking in at nearly 10. These were taboo-breaking acts to a 12-year-old with little musical knowledge.

And what sticks in my mind now, now that I can put that time in context, is just how astonishing Bowie was in the 1970s. You could argue that Dylan ruled the 1960s, but the 1970s were Bowie's.

In 1970 and 1971 we were brought ‘The Man Who Sold The World' and ‘Hunky Dory', with hits like the former's title track, ‘Changes' and ‘Life on Mars'. But it was 1972 with ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust' and the Spiders From Mars that Bowie really took off. It is a near-perfect album, every song a classic.

‘The Space Oddity' album, initially ignored in 1969, was re-released later that year, but by then Bowie had moved on, picking up the coruscating avant garde piano of New Yorker Mike Garson for another stone cold classic, Aladdin Sane. The same year, 1973, he recorded an album of affectionate covers, ‘Pin Ups'.

The year 1974 saw his toughest rock album yet, ‘Diamond Dogs', a concept piece about a dystopian future, but even before the US tour for that finished he became enamoured with soul music, recreated in classic Bowie style as 1975's ‘Young Americans'.

A year later saw synthesisers enter the mix with the challenging ‘Station To Station', before Bowie decamped to Germany and between 1977 and 1979 produced, along with Brian Eno, his acclaimed ‘Berlin Trilogy', ‘Low', ‘Heroes', and ‘Lodger'. His success can be measured in the fact that when he released 1980's ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)' it was actually seen as a 'comeback” since ‘Lodger' contained no hit singles.

That's 11 years and 13 albums. Incredible. I am glad to have been a teenager during those years and to know the music I liked then has lasted and can bring the same intense joy and pleasure.

Thanks Mr B.