THEY say you never forget your first crush.

And for me that was East 17. Or Tony Mortimer to be exact.

In 1995 I had been a screaming teenager, jumping up and down at Birmingham's National Indoor Arena when I saw East 17 on their Letting Off Steam tour.

Fast forward nearly two decades later, at Oxford's O2 Academy, and I thought that was all behind me.

I went along not as an excitable groupie but as a professional 30-something woman interested to compare how times had changed.

Or so I thought.

I only took the first couple of chords of the opening song to undo all the growing up I thought I had achieved over the past 16 or so years.

And judging by the reaction of those around me, I was far from the only one.

Even the fact that lead singer Brian Harvey had been replaced by Blair Dreelan was not enough to dampen the crowd's spirits.

Despite looking the part - with the trademark baseball cap and tight vest top - Dreelan's grittier, more edgy voice was very different from the soft tones of Harvey's.

He might not have sounded the same, but any fears over being shortchanged on the old classics were shortlived.

We had House of Love, Steam, Let it Rain, Deep, Around the World, Stay Another Day, and West End Girls.

It was only in the encore that we had a taste of their new single Secret of My Life.

Yes, East 17 were not the fresh faced young bad boys of pop that they once had been.

But nor was I the bright eyed teenager with posters on my walls and love hearts scrawled on my pencil case.

"It's really embarrassing," I overheard one girl say to her friend as we were leaving.

"It's been 16 years and I thought I'd got over them - but it all came rushing back like it was yesterday."

It seems it wasn't just me who didn't forget my teenage crush.

But in the words of the final encore, I decided that this time it was really alright.