Video killed the radio star

MTV changed everything when it started broadcasting in America in 1981. It's simple concept of airing music videos 24 hours a day seven days a week took off and had such a profound effect on the music industry and popular culture that it could make or break an act.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, rock and roll" were the words that launched MTV on the 1 August 1981. The Buggles’ "Video Killed the Radio Star". I have very strong memories of this video, and countless others, from Duran Duran to Ultravox, The Eurythmics to Dire Straits. In 1981, we had just moved house to Derry a matter of months. I was 11, and if I'm honest, it was my brother who would watch it all the time. We were hooked on it, so much so that it would take us a while to realise someone else was in the room with us. Our house on Clarendon Street used to be a dentist and a few of the dentist's patients didn't know he had moved on, and would wander in off the street and sit down beside us and watch MTV with us, probably thinking that this had become a very plush waiting room. My mother eventually locked the side gate.

But I was the MTV generation. Last night at the Odyssey Arena Belfast, I realised I wasn't. The side gate of my MTV experience was shut. In reality it shut about 20 years ago, but somehow I hadn't got it. In a world of tweets and status updates, I thought I knew Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, but I know the gossip, not their music. And I am not a fan. So while the true fans screamed, danced, took photos and screamed, I sat there unmoved.

Now if it had been Peter Gabriel doing "Sledgehammer", Aha and "Take on Me "or, best of all, Kim Wilde "Kids in America", I would have been on my feet. That's why I probably shouldn't have been there last night, and the young man who approached me outside who said he had come from Spain to see the show but didn't have a ticket, should have been in my seat. But for tonight, my feet are up, the fire is lit and I will be watching the finale of "Downton Abbey".