My all-time favourite David Bowie single followed The Jean Genie. It was another song from his forthcoming album Aladdin Sane – Drive-In Saturday.

While my adoration of Bowie is so great that my top ten of his songs would probably change daily, there are few days, if any, when this would not be my number one. It is, quite simply, my favourite David Bowie single.

Inspired by a nocturnal train journey he took across the desert landscapes between Seattle and Phoenix on his 1972 US tour (he famously wouldn’t fly in those days), he wrote it for Mott The Hoople, who turned it down.

Bowie said it’s about a post-apocalyptic future where people have forgotten how to have sex and need to watch vintage pornography to see how it’s done. He imagined this taking place in 2033, clearly failing to foresee the arrival of the Internet and the effect PornHub would have on the libido long before then.

Unusually, Bowie plays synth on the song, which appeared on Aladdin Sane, with David Sanborn playing the sax prior to his bigger role with Bowie a few years later on Young Americans. The lyrics contain references to Twiggy (“Twig the wonder kid”), Carl Jung (“the foreman” who “prayed at work”) and Mick Jagger (people stared in his eyes for sexual satisfaction).

The Jagger line is a little different on this first televised version, from the Russell Harty chat show, where Trevor Bolder’s grey sideburns have taken on a life of their own.

Once, after interviewing him for what turned out to be the last time, backstage before a gig in Marseilles in 2003, Bowie called me back towards the dressing room as I was leaving and asked me if there was any particular song I’d like to hear at the show he was about to give.

“How about Drive-In Saturday?” I suggested. “You don’t often play that one and it’s my favourite.” He smiled and replied: “Fuck off.” We had met half a dozen times – and those were almost the last words he ever spoke to me.