It is half past nine in the morning and if this blog was written by hand I would not be able to move for screwed up sheets of paper by now. I was shaken awake by Mandi shouting my name in a manner befitting the house being on fire or a gang of gun-toting burglars making their way up the stairs, she knows that I hate being jolted awake so I knew that this had to be important. 

The weird thing is that I had been kind of expecting this for a while now but kept it quiet as I suppose I figured that by not saying it then it couldn't come true. What shocked me the most is that David Bowie had been fighting cancer for eighteen months. This perhaps explains the reclusive behaviour over the last few years, the not touring, not appearing to collect awards, sending people along with quotes and the likes of Tony Visconti doing the leg work regarding promoting the albums. 

The best way to write this is as a personal piece based on what David Bowie means (yes means, deliberate present tense) to me.

The first single I bought (as I have written and spoken about before) was 'Dancing In The Street', the single that Bowie and Mick Jagger recorded for Live Aid in 1985. At the time I thought that the video was the coolest thing I had ever seen, but of course I hadn't seen as much stuff as I have now. Actually, looking back it today it isn't as bad as memory would have you believe. What you see are two friends comfortable enough with each other to camp it up and take the piss out of themselves in what apparently took only a few hours to produce and was so rushed that there are moments when the camera operator has trouble keeping them in shot. 

Although my two favourite albums are The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Aladdin Sane, there isn't a persona or musical direction that I don't like. To be honest if he had recorded himself reading aloud from the phone book I would have bought it. Not only was David Bowie unafraid of trying new styles and displaying the influences, he was equally unafraid of losing the die hard fans who wanted him to remain primarily a rock star. What's also nice is the fact that he wanted to simply be an entertainer and tried several routes to fame (and he did want to be famous) as a singer in a band, a mime artist, and Anthony Newley style comic singer before releasing 'Space Oddity' in 1969. The ball didn't really start rolling until Ziggy Stardust in 1973, and although I wasn't born at the time I am aware of the cultural significance of the famous 'Starman' appearance on Top of the Pops, coupled with the introduction of colour television and sexual ambiguity it was like nothing ever seen on television before. While most rockers are happy remain with the well worn formula (I can only think of Queen as another example, a predominantly 'rock' band who infused disco, funk, soul and even opera to their audience, whether they wanted it or not), Bowie was always reinventing himself. In 1975 he embraced soul music becoming (at the time) only the fifth white singer to appear on the television show Soul Train. 

The story begins for me properly one evening in the early 1980s when my parents had the singles and albums out and were playing them for my sister and I, as much for our education as for their entertainment. I picked up the single 'Let's Dance' and asked who it was and my dad replied too quickly for me to take it in which resulted in me thinking he had said David Bellamy. Television personalities had a habit of releasing novelty singles back then so it was perfectly reasonable to me that the man who did the nature programmes might cut a disc. My dad quickly corrected me before singing the chorus in David Bellamy's voice, which is something I think of every time I hear that song. Live Aid was the next big thing in my musical life, and although history has decreed that Queen stole the show for my money it was Bowie and it has been ever since.

The excitement of the release of 'Where Are We Now' in 2013 came from nowhere and, to use a modern expression, broke the Internet. David Bowie had not lost it, of course he couldn't lose it because he is David Bowie. I was lucky enough to get press access to the David Bowie Is exhibition at the V&A before it opened to the public and it was truly breathtaking to see all of the costumes and handwritten lyrics among the other treasure. Of course we all hoped that there might be another tour but this was never to be. The moment you know, you know he sang on 'Where Are We Now', maybe he knew then that he didn't have long and wanted to leave as much as possible behind. Reports are stating that Bowie had cancer for eighteen months but how do we know what was really going on? My biggest regret will always be never seeing him live, but I wouldn't have liked to have seen a frail man going through the motions.

As I said, Mandi woke me up this morning in tears having heard it on Classic FM news (we have that on to help us sleep) and while I ran to fetch the laptop I suggested she turn to 6 Music where news had been confirmed. It is now three o'clock and I have had the radio on all day in addition to having Facebook and Twitter open on my computer while I attempt to get these words down. It is pleasing to see that all the posts are of love and loss, and I have had tears in my eyes while I try to write this. I had only been awake for about ten minutes when the BBC rang me up asking if I would talk Bowie for them but it was too early, not in the morning sense but as in I was only just allowing the news to sink in myself and couldn't have gone on live radio and talked rubbish without time to think. 

I haven't even mentioned how he invented social media and introduced us to the concept of downloading a single back in the days when the Internet was that expensive dial up thing n the computer that we only went on for minutes at a time. There's no time now.

It was only three days ago when his final album Blackstar was released, it was confirmed by Tony Visconti on Facebook that he knew that this was the end. "Look up here, I'm in heaven" he declared, because the moment you know, you know.

Rest in peace genius.