In the early eighties, Pet Shop Boys (no definite article) were the intelligent indie-disco hybrid that transported the euphoric chords of Donna Summer and Sylvester to the repressed North European milieu of New Order and The Smiths. They emerged from the sleazy residue of Hi-NRG and disco, oozing sophistication and class.

Looking back at their early output, one can see how they seduced us insecure proto-queers. Their music reflected and amplified our ache for sinister glamour; we too wanted to run with the dogs tonight in Suburbia and go S. h.o./p.p.i.n.g. The clever-clever wordsmithery, heaped with ambiguous gender codes allowed us to identify with them in a way that we couldn't with the celebration of obviousness that was U2 and Bon Jovi. Left to my own devices and It's a sin remain the twin apexes of restrained rebellion. The latter, a four-minute damning invective against Catholic prurience, remains their biggest Irish hit (coincidence? I think not). The former is perhaps the best description of the dynamic felt when pop, literature and the 'lonely boy' meet: 'But in the back of my head/I heard distant feet/ Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat.' That was me! And speaking of disco, PSB activated our latent disco-genes without fear of reprisal. Could we have proudly displayed our 12-inch of Male Stripper in the Biology lab as we did our cassettes of Please and Disco?

But we are no longer mawkish adolescents and closeted pop is so yesterday, so do we need PSB anymore? Well, yes, actually. PSB are the antithesis of the bombast of the corporate romance, the anti-Diane Warren. Theatricality and performance have never been far from PSB Street, as in QueerWorld. Their songs today capture that muted drama of our increasingly complex lovelives. Their 90s output has had much of the world-weary poignancy and compensatory hedonism that we, the post-AIDS generation, know. PSB pump the dancefloor into our own bedrooms, while chastising the cheating partner without hysteria. While they may occasionally succumb to the lure of the high chart placing (Go West, New York City boy), they are never vacuous. Shameless commercialism can be dressed up in quotation marks and arched eyebrows, making us at ease with our ongoing love for the tooth-rotting charms of pop.

Pet Shop Boys are the disco Blue Nile, the non-crap Backstreet Boys. In 10 years time, disco-bunnies and pseudo indie-kids will cringe when their partners find Schizophonic or Be Here Now on the chi-chi shelf. You will never need to hide a PSB record. Not only are they beautifully packaged, they will tell you as much about yourself and your times as you will want them to.

I'm convinced that the closeted teen possesses a precocious understanding of the arbitrariness and artifice of social 'norms'. He or she is confronted early on with the realisation that one is not like the other boys and girls. But one always felt somewhat like the Pet Shop Boys. I still do.