Donny Osmond became the biggest pop idol for schoolgirls everywhere when he topped the charts with Puppy Love in the summer of 1972.

Those old favourites just keep on coming. This isn’t one of them.

Obviously this was just about the worst song in the world for a boy on the cusp of adolescence at the time. Half a century later it’s even worse watching Donny’s winsome head-lolling performance. And kinda creepy considering he was a child.

Puppy Love made him a wholesome pin-up for every schoolgirl – and instantly hateable to every boy in the land.

More than 30 years after this, I would find myself in New York, sitting in a diner booth across from Donny Osmond, remembering the time this song topped the charts in July 1972.

We bonded when we discovered that our birthdays were only a few days apart so we were both 14 when Puppy Love came out and turned him into a pop idol. He looked at me with those still-puppyish eyes and said with heartfelt empathy: “Gee, you must have really hated me back then.”

Oh yes, I agreed gleefully. “So what music did you like?” he inquired eagerly. “Oh, you know… Slade, Sweet, T. Rex, Gary Glitter,” I replied, truthfully. “Ah… Gary Glitter!” Donny sighed wistfully. “He was great. Whatever happened to him?”

In my dealings with Donny, over a period of a few years, he constantly exhibited a burning desire to acquire a bit of what used to be called street cred. it really bothered him. He once had a manager who suggested he get himself a drug conviction but Donny felt that would be taking things too far for someone who doesn’t even drink Coke, let alone put it up his nose.

Anyway, there he was in 1972, a pretty boy with big white teeth, lovely dark hair and a voice like an angel. He may well have been the first pop star I actively despised. And this song, which had previously been a hit 12 years earlier for Paul Anka, is still really annoying.

Especially the bit where little Donny’s voice breaks down in the middle when he goes: “Someone help me… help me… help me pleee-hee-hee-heeeeze.”