Kate Bush will knock your block off, Steve

That's a song ruined, then. Steve Blacknell reckons he was Kate Bush's Man With The Child In His Eyes.

Yes, that Steve Blacknell. The Daily Mail suggests this:

Steve himself had a successful career in music and TV, and he's best known today for having interviewed Phil Collins on Concorde as the Genesis drummer 'commuted' between the London and Philadelphia stages of Bob Geldof's pioneering Live Aid concert in 1985.

But he's actually best remembered - if at all - as the bloke who did Knock Your Block Off.

Blacknell's own website, by the way, describes his filling-air-time interview with Collins thus:

a year later took a pivotal role in "Live Aid", interviewing Phil Collins on his historic transatlantic concorde flight between London and Philadelphia.

Yes, that was the pivotal part of Live Aid; right up there with Frank Partridge doing news headlines at 3pm.

So, what is the evidence that Blacknell is the Man?

He was Kate Bush's boyfriend at the time she wrote the song - she was 13 at the time; Blacknell was born six years before her. Don't do the maths.

He also has the handwritten lyrics for the song:

Steve Blacknell, 58, of Hythe, Kent, said: 'By the spring of 1975 she had become my first true love.'

'All I really knew about her was that she wrote songs, played the piano and lived in a lovely house with an equally lovely family.

'But I've been told by those around her that I was indeed The Man With The Child In His Eyes and I know that those words were given to me by someone very special.

'They say you never forget your first love and in my case it's as true as it is for anyone. It's true too that she went on to charm, enlighten and entrance people all over the world.'

'I'm proud to have known and loved her, and proud to have shared such amazing times with the genius that is Kate Bush.'

Yes, yes, I'm sure you have a small tear in your eye that you're wiping away, although given that we know about this because Blacknell has put the lyrics up for sale, you might want to feel less moved and more slightly nauseated.

Against his suggestion that he is The Man is that the song doesn't really seem to be about an actual man, and most - if not all - of Bush's work is based on fiction. Perhaps Blacknell also believes he's that there Heathcliff out of the other one.

And, perhaps more importantly, there's Kate on Swap Shop:



About five minutes in, a caller asks Kate what the song is about. "It's about men generally" she explains. To be fair, Steve Blacknell is a man, generally, but there's not any indication that the song is about a specific person at all.

Being an article on Kate, the Mail, of course, is obliged by law to suggest that Bush is some sort of weird recluse:

Kate Bush, now married to guitarist Danny McIntosh, completely withdrew from public life in 1998 following the birth of her son Albert.

Really, Daily Mail? Never mind the 2005 album and promotional stuff, who's this, then, on stage with Dave Gilmour in 2007?