A couple of months back, when it was announced that Spandau Ballet's Reformation tour (so named not only because the band happened to be reforming but as a nod to the label on which they had their initial run of hits) would kick off in Dublin next Tuesday, the group held a press conference in a hotel in CityWest.

What was unusual was not that it was held on a Saturday afternoon, but that it was made clear that the band were up for going drinking with journalists afterwards.

Now back in the days when Spandau were in their pomp and availing of Ireland's liberal tax regime for artists by temporarily relocating to Dublin, it was a fairly common occurrence to bump into them in the various nightspots where bands and hacks tended to gather after dark. They, along with the likes of Def Leppard and Frankie Goes To Hollywood, were to be found milling around the pool table in the upstairs lounge of the Pink Elephant.

Back in the 1980s that kind of mingling was quite common, but since then the controlling stranglehold of management and PR has reached ridiculous levels of paranoia, certainly for new acts, and it's only the old stagers who can see through the nonsense.

Certainly Spandau Ballet never came across as being overly weighed down with airs and graces. Like the aforementioned Leppards and Frankies they were normal working-class blokes who just happened to have clicked majorly with the record-buying public. Having formed as a group of north London soulboys and Bowie obsessives, their initial introduction to the wider world came via a series of breathless reports in London's style bible, The Face.

It was in the pages of this now-defunct magazine that we first got to hear about the movement that was to become known as the New Romantics, with Spandau leading the charge -- soon to be followed by Culture Club, Duran Duran and many, many more gaily coloured peacocks.

By the time it came to releasing their first single, To Cut A Long Story Short, at the end of 1980, the band's wily manager, Steve Dagger, was clearly aware that being associated with an elite London club scene might cause resentment and damage potential sales, and so took to issuing press statements that simply referred to them as "five young men from Islington".

Spandau Ballet did go for the whole kilt and cummerbund kit'n'caboodle in their first flush of success but, given that it was a period when stupidity and flash were expected from pop acts this added greatly to the gaiety of the times.

Chief songwriter Gary Kemp was definitely allowing his Bowie influences to come through early on but by the band's third album, True, he'd stripped things back to pop-soul basics and, with the band now wearing sharp suits rather than loincloths, they had their best run of hits in the UK and even cracked the US Top 5 with the album's title track.

Although mind you, maybe if they hadn't gone on the lash so often in Dublin we might have been spared Through the Barricades.

Spandau Ballet play the O2 on Tuesday

- George Byrne