Kylie Minogue Made me Cry

Firstly, this isn't as gay as it sounds.

Back when I was about 5 years old, I had a 'crush' on Kylie. It was clearly a perfectly innocent infatuation and involved not a lot more than me keeping a signed photograph of hers under my pillow. At any other age, it would have bordered on creepy.

My father worked for the local news at the time and one of his colleagues had been working on an item about Kylie opening up the Alton Mouse - a rickety new ride at Alton Towers. A surprise was being hatched for my upcoming birthday.

The first I knew of it was being sat down on the day, in front of the TV. It's odd that my memory of the day is still relatively vivid, considering my knowledge of that time is pretty hazy on the whole.

A video was started and Kylie appeared, causing my young heart to flutter. She was sitting in the Alton Mouse and looked directly to the camera saying 'Happy Birthday Ben Lee' and then 'I Should Be So Lucky' played as she rollercoasted for the umpteenth time that day.

My immediate reaction was completely natural.

I ran upstairs to my bedroom and burst into tears.

I put it down to shock. Having your name spoken out on tape by someone you idolised was an experience that my 5-year-old brain found troubling to process. The fact that my birthday had somewhat entered the mind of a celebrity was enough to evoke steady tears that day.

Weirdly, I never watched that video again. It's whereabouts are unknown to me. Since then, a lot has changed. The Alton Mouse closed down after an alleged death. Kylie lost her place as my #1 crush to Kim Basinger (you know you're a child of the 80s when you have a childhood crush on Kim Basinger). Finally, Kylie moved on to a level where she wasn't having to promote deadly rollercoasters to the local news audience.

It's an odd memory that sticks out to me from my childhood more than many other 'important' ones. It was my first real brush with celebrity, albeit a distant one. I think it taught me that they weren't totally out of my reach, that they did exist in a world I could be a part of.

Okay so I'm hardly spending my weekends snorting cocaine off Lindsay Lohan's firecrotch but I'm more aware than I could be.

One thing I vowed after that day - never to let a celebrity make me cry ever again. Surprisingly, I'm doing pretty damn well...