Right, so let me tell you about the night I saw David Bowie at Birmingham NEC on the Let's Dance tour in the 80s. I was buzzing walking in. The place was heaving — thousands of people there for the same reason — and when he walked out on stage the whole room erupted. This bloke was on another level entirely. He wasn't performing. He was just being Bowie. Completely at home up there. One of those gigs you carry around with you forever.

Growing up I'd followed him from the Ziggy Stardust days. That early 70s stretch when he showed up looking like he'd landed from somewhere else entirely — the wild costumes, the androgynous look, the whole Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars persona. Nothing else happening in music at the time came close. My mates didn't know whether to be confused or obsessed. Most of us ended up both.

What got me about Bowie was that he genuinely didn't repeat himself. Just when you'd got used to one version of him, he'd already moved on — soul records, funk, then that brilliant, strange Berlin period with Brian Eno: Heroes, Low, Lodger. Unlike anything else on the radio. I still put Heroes on now and it sounds completely fresh.

Then Let's Dance came out and suddenly he was everywhere — massive pop hooks, slick videos, "China Girl" on constant rotation. Some people reckoned he'd sold out. Standing in the NEC watching him own that enormous stage, I wasn't thinking about any of that. I was just thinking: bloody hell, what a show.

He wasn't just a musician either. Diamond Dogs is a full-on concept album with a dark, dystopian world built inside it. His lyrics weren't throwaway — they had real ideas in them, things worth sitting with. Fashion, art, theatre — he moved through all of it and somehow made it feel natural rather than try-hard.

He died in January 2016 and the world felt it straight away. What made it even more extraordinary was Blackstar — the album he released two days before his death, which turned out to be a farewell he'd planned all along. Even at the very end, doing things entirely his own way.

Ask almost any musician who influenced them and Bowie's name comes up. New wave, art rock, electronic, alternative — doesn't matter the genre, his shadow falls across all of it. Decades of artists who sound nothing like each other but all trace something back to him.

The tees carry all of that. Put on a Bowie shirt and it's not just merch — it's a conversation starter, a bit of music history you can actually wear. Whether you're into the Ziggy era, the Berlin records, or the big glossy 80s stuff I got to witness live at the NEC, there's something that fits. They look great and they mean something. Can't ask for more than that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na8xgu-KLAk