Parenthetical added on account of “holiday” stateside tending to be Christmas music, and Mariah Carey is nowhere to be found in the story.

Until 1982, if you wanted to go on holiday, you had to go to a high street travel agent, who would generally make a bunch of phone calls and tell you to come back later. Then Thomson Holidays introduced the first computerised booking system and pricing was deregulated – enter the golden age of Brits-on-tour package trips to Benidorm, Torremolinos and the other resorts scattered along the Costa del Sol.

It created a curious phenomenon of its own: the hit single the holidaymakers brought home. Plenty of 1980s European artists won a single hit, perhaps two, in the UK before slinking back into obscurity or – just as often – back into the domestic or continental stardom they already had before the British deigned to take an interest. For a few weeks, their names were inescapable: Spagna, Sabrina, Modern Talking, Desireless, Baltimora, Opus, Nena. Then they became pub quiz answers.

I was at HEB yesterday, and 99 Luftballoons was playing over the intercom. Not the absurd English version, but the original German.

Fitting, I suppose, if anyone actually knew what she was saying … “und daß sowas von sowas kommt.”