After completing a degree in history at the Polytechnic of North London, Neil takes a job at Marvel Comics, anglicizing spellings and indicating where over-risque woman needed to be redrawn decently. While there he interviews comic fan Marc Bolan, who politely points out that his tape recorder wasn’t working. In 1977 he works at Macdonald Educational Publishing, later moving to ITV Books. In June 1982, he joins Smash Hits.
BPI awards a U.K. gold record to ‘West End Girls.’
On the newstands this month—Out magazine has the Pet Shop Boys on the cover. Inside they lead off the article on the ‘Out 100’ people who ‘defined the year 1999.’
Worldwide New Year celebrations begin with PSB music: the fireworks show in Sydney, Australia, broadcast around the world, starts with the intro to the Boys’ recording of ‘Numb’.
About 4½ minutes into the official synchronized soundtrack to London’s New Year’s fireworks spectacular, the familiar strains of ‘West End Girls’ begin to play. But it proves to be a mashup of WEG with Florence + the Machine’s ‘You Got the Love,’ which then plays only briefly before switching to another track altogether.
The Pet Shop Boys ring in the new year by performing in front of Berlin’s famed Brandenburg Gate shortly after midnight New Year’s Eve (so, yes, it is on New Year’s Day).
The German radio station WDR2 broadcasts a special program devoted to the Pet Shop Boys, featuring highlights from their concert in Köln (Cologne) the previous November as well as PSB hits and selections from their most recent albums, Electric and Super.
Once again PSB music serves as the musical soundtrack to the post-midnight New Year’s fireworks in Sydney, Australia: this year it’s the strains of their version of ‘Go West.’
To help kick off the new year, the film of the Pet Shop Boys’ Inner Sanctum show at London’s Royal Opera House in July 2018 has its world television premiere (in an edited edition) in the very early morning hours (0:25 a.m.) on Germany’s 3Sat network.
The Pet Shop Boys appear shortly after midnight on ‘The Big New Years & Years Eve Party’ (which had begun about 50 minutes earlier, when it was still 2021), hosted by Olly Alexander/Years & Years, on BBC One. They perform ‘It’s a Sin’ and ‘Dreamland’ with Olly.