Andy Richardson: Glassy man Jason takes our breath away

Jason Donovan had the best-selling album of 1989, won so many Smash Hits awards that he needed a truck to get them all home and had girls waiting for him on the corner of every street. Which must have been a little weird for a laidback Aussie who just wanted to go surfing with his mates.

The man who became a household name when he played Scott Robinson on Neighbours, marrying his on-screen beau Charlene, aka Kylie Minogue, was the very definition of a heart-throb. And, it seems, very little has changed in the intervening years.

Jason is presently on tour with his Amazing Midlife Crisis Show, an opportunity for him to reflect on 50 years on Planet Earth, with 30 of those having been spent as a superstar. He’s discussing the highlights and the hang-ups, the lucky breaks and breakdowns in a show that spans Neighbours, Ten Good Reasons, Kylie, cocaine, Rocky Horror, Priscilla, I’m A Celebrity, Strictly Come Dancing and whether it’s possible to have your cake and eat it.

You’d have thought that after three decades, the fans who once swooned might have settled down, had kids, married (and remarried) then become something approaching respectable. As I said, you’d have thought. . .

The truth, of course, is that first love never dies and those who imagined they’d somehow be swept off their feet by the charming Mr Donovan still labour under such misapprehensions. So, when the star visits Winchester and Wakefield, Bridlington and Birmingham, Margate and Maidstone, he’s followed by a few dozen amorous ladies who profess undying love – or, in the case of one particularly devoted (but not a stalker, honestly) woman from Gateshead, ask him to sign a body part and then have it tattooed as a permanent reminder of their fleeting encounter. Oooosh.

Jason has been famous for so long that he can take it or leave it. Being accosted on the street is as normal to him as putting on a pair of boxing gloves is for Anthony Joshua. He grins and bears it, offering himself up for more selfies in a week than Wetherspoons serves pints. And at the end of each show, there’s inevitably a come-on from a woman (or 10) who ought to know better.

The adoration of women aged 23 to 53 is ever present. God knows what life must be like for Justin Bieber or Harry Styles.

There are, however, some ladies who stick in the memory. On his present tour, for instance, in addition to the lady with the tattooed body part and the many who offer themselves up for, erm, late-night chats – and all of their proposals are gallantly put to one side by the ten-years-married Mr Donovan – there have been others who stand out like Borat’s mankini on a Lyme Regis beach.

Like the woman who claimed she’d won his breath in a national competition and kept it for 29 years in her room. She even bought a plastic bottle along to his Amazing Midlife Crisis tour in some far flung town to prove it. At the height of his fame, Jason was asked by the journalist Rick Sky to breathe into a jar so that it could go up for grabs as the first prize in a competition. He obliged, highlighting the extreme nature of fame, so as to give a fan the chance to, erm, keep his breath.

Twenty-nine years later, a woman at a recent show held a jar aloft at the end of a show and screamed: “Jason, I’ve still got your breath.” It’s at this point in the paragraph that we usually slip in the word ‘Bonkers’. However, on this occasion, we’ll refrain. For as all Jason Donovan detectives know, the jar he breathed into for Rick Sky was made of glass, while the bottle from the super-fan claimant was plastic. Doh.

Elsewhere, a woman cheerfully shouted at the end of a show that she’d got a swipe of Jason Donovan’s sweat, which she’d decanted, like a decent Beaujolais, into a jar. The jar had been retained at the back of her fridge, presumably near to the massacred rabbits, for posterity. Which is nice.

Jason once sang about doing the Time Warp during a particularly successful run in the Rocky Horror Show.

Though when he’s accosted by fans who claim to have his breath and sweat in their fridge or tattooed signature across their chest, he must be thinking he’s doing the Mind Warp.

At least Tom Jones only had to contend with having knickers thrown at him. Jason will be in Telford and Stafford at the start of May for two more shows. God only knows what local fans will bring.