Do you remember Mandy Smith?

A perfect illustration of how I thought age gap relationships were fine

I was watching an Instagram reel last week and an influencer was talking about Mandy Smith. Do you remember her? She was 13 when she met Bill Wyman from the Rolling Stones. She was 18 when she married him in 1989. Bill Wyman was 52. I remember buying magazines with Mandy Smith on the cover when I was a teen. I think she did an appearance at the Capital Radio Junior Best Disco. She had massive hair and was painfully thin. I passed out because I was too near the front and got flattened by young women in Bros merch, when Jon Moss from Culture Club came on stage and all the girls went bonkers. I didn’t think it was weird that Mandy was going out with a man almost 40 years older than her. I don’t think any of the articles pointed out that it was not okay. A man who also looked old because this was before the days of Botox and hair transplants and getting your teeth sorted in Turkey. He looked like her dad. The thing is I was also a tad jealous as I wanted to be on the cover of Just 17 too (and didn’t care that you had to date an old man to get there). My best friend and I were already clubbing when we were 14. We used to go into the West End a couple of nights a week. We’d get into clubs for free and go straight to the front of the queue. We knew the bouncer Les well and he didn’t bother asking how old we were. I think about my daughter now and she’s almost 12. I can’t imagine sending her into a night club full of old(er) men (my friend and I looked about 18 but the men we met were chiefly in their twenties and some in their thirties). When people say that Gen X were raised on hose water and neglect then I think they’re not kidding.