What it’s like to sing Agadoo for 40 years

Dene Betteridge’s stage name is Dene Michael but he’s better known as ‘Mr Agadoo’. The former Black Lace star has sung their most famous novelty song an estimated 10,000 times over four decades – that’s 90,000 times to the left and 90,000 times to the right if you were following all the dance moves.

Black Lace’s songs, which attempted to put the fun in funky, seemingly soundtracked every children’s party held in the 80s and 90s.

You can love or loathe “Agadoo” – Betteridge, 68, himself has mixed feelings. “To be honest, I did try and stop doing it for a while,” he says. “I was brought up on soul music. I try all different styles of songs, but you’ll always get people up on the dance floor to ‘Agadoo.’”

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Betteridge is subject of a new documentary, Still Pushing Pineapples, by Kim Hopkins, whose previous film, A Bunch of Amateurs, celebrated Bradford Movie Makers, one of the oldest filmmaking clubs in the world. She wanted to follow that with another story that had its foundations in working-class communities.

“I was thinking about working men’s clubs, these shared spaces that are disappearing, and about entertainers,” she says. That path led, perhaps inevitably, to “Agadoo”.

“I stuck it on one day. It was the first time I’d heard it for many decades. I thought, oh gosh, whatever happened to these guys? I did my Googling and realised they were from West Yorkshire. I didn’t even know they were British – it doesn’t sound like a very British song, you know, pineapples, palm trees and things like that.”

The original plan was to tell a grander story of Black Lace but she found their history tricky to untangle, with more in and outs than the hokey cokey. As a four-piece they came seventh in the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest; by 1983 the duo of Alan Barton and Colin Routh began totting up party hits like “Superman” and “Do the Conga”, before “Agadoo” was unleashed in 1984. It sold more than a million copies globally, only kept off the top of the UK charts by George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”.

As is often the case with British showbusiness successes, there can be a flipside of sleaze and misfortune. In 1986, Colin Routh left the group following a relationship with an underage girl. Betteridge stepped in as a replacement. In 1987 (the same year they released The Blue Album which contained re-recorded adult versions of songs, ie “Have a Screw”) Routh returned, now called Colin Gibb. Betteridge stayed on as Alan Barton left to join Smokie. He was killed when the band’s coach crashed while on tour in Germany in 1995.

Betteridge wasn’t a member of Black Lace when the song was recorded – though he does backing vocals on the track – nor is he a member today. A separate Black Lace entity is coming soon to a Butlin’s near you (they played in both Minehead and Skegness this month).

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The choice of Betteridge as a documentary subject was driven partly to be a counterpoint to the spate of heavily sanitised, sycophantic celebrity profiles: Beckhams, Meghan, Robbie Williams…

“I wanted to know what it was like to be singing this stuff four decades later, the toll it has taken,” Hopkins explains. “I relate to this stuff. You make sacrifices to become an artist. Then you get to a certain age and go, hmm was that a good idea?”

Still Pushing Pineapples follows Betteridge gigging around village halls and Blackpool hotels off-season, while caring for his elderly mum Anne, now 91, taking her on a road trip to Benidorm to fulfil a bucket-list wish. It’s a pathos-filled, funny film, that never patronises its stars nor the punters he plays to.

“Agadoo” is a contradiction that cuts to faultlines in tastes and class. The song was massively popular, but certainly not cool.

“Radio 1 banned it when it originally was out, it wasn’t credible enough,” Betteridge says.

“I genuinely believe this is something to do with being based in the north of England,” adds Hopkins. “It was the London music press that had it in for them.”

People are now learning not to feel guilty about guilty pleasures, with sell-out events like Bongo’s Bingo celebrating nostalgic cheesy pop. “I’ve done a few of those,” Betteridge says. “What an atmosphere. They love these songs, ‘Agadoo’, ‘I Am the Music Man’. We have them congaing around the theatre.”

Betteridge still harbours ambitions to have another hit, and thinks the UK is overdue a new party anthem. So he’s written one to go with the film, helped by AI (‘Sun, sun, sun shining so bright, we’re going to party from the morning till night’).

Until more chart success, Betteridge is keeping busy. “I’m doing Christmas light switch-ons [in places such as Kirkby and Wrexham] at the moment, I do a beach party at The Lyndene Hotel in Blackpool every January. They dress it up with palm trees and have blow-up novelty footballs so that’s something to look forward to as well.

“I like to see people enjoying themselves when I’m performing, smiling and happy. Some of these people will say, I’m not getting up to ‘Agadoo’, they have a few drinks then all of a sudden when it comes on, they’re there on the dance floor.”

And now you might have the song stuck in your head too. Good luck trying to shake it out.

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