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There is a stirring in Carnaby Street, London. I glance up to see Brigitte Thunderbug smiling and waving bashfully at a table of lads outside a coffee shop. She is probably the only woman in Britain with a first-class degree in neuroscience who turned down a place on a PhD course to form a girl group. She is German, 6ft tall, with tumbling blond locks, and surrounded by scarcely less striking colleagues. The smiles and cries are not of awe or lust but of recognition, despite the fact that she won't release a record for more than three weeks.
Epic Records are rumoured to have signed Thunderbugs for the largest first-time advance ever, only six months after they'd formed, and to have spent a queen's ransom on promotion. Someone thinks they will sell bucketloads of product, even if most citizens negotiating the forests of band posters will shrug, `Another girl band.' That is, if they don't assume it's a Hennes ad. As with sex, every generation thinks it invented the girl group, but while the Supremes, Ronettes and Vandellas all contributed to the golden age of pop, the Sixties can't touch...