So here we are - December rings in the last of my year-long tribute to my personal Legends of Motown.

This month's Legend has to be the group who first got me excited in the label and it's artists and I guess for quite a few in my generation that was through The Jackson 5.

It helped that I was the age that I presume was their demographic audience and I remember playing my 7" single of ABC at the primary school leaving party. I just loved them. I remember staring at the record wondering how that happy sound could be actually hidden in those grooves. Of course what I also was hypnotized by was my first blast of Soul.

The next year I bought with my birthday money what was for me then - and probably still is - The Greatest Album Of All Time: Motown Chartbusters Volume 5. Apart from The Jackson 5 (The Love You Save / I'll Be There) it had Smokey Robinson and The Miracles (Tears of A Clown), Edwin Starr (War), The Supremes (Stoned Love), Marvin Gaye (Abraham, Martin and John), Martha Reeves and The Vandellas (Forget Me Not), Four Tops (It's All In The Game / Still Water (Love)), The Temptations (Ball of Confusion), Stevie Wonder (Heaven Help Us All / Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours), Jimmy Ruffin (It's Wonderful To Be Loved By You / I'll Say Forever My Love), Diana Ross (Ain't No Mountain High Enough), The Spinners (It's A Shame).

I played that album to death... looking at the pictures of all the artists on the cover... wanting to know who they all were and dreaming of going to this magical place where all these people made this amazing music.

Needless to say my bedroom wall was covered in pictures of the happy smiling Jacksons in their multi-coloured outfits and my nose was always pressed against the screen whenever they appeared on TV - when they appeared on TOTP singing "Rockin' Robin" in their orange and yellow outfits I nearly self-combusted, to say nothing of their appearance on the 1972 Royal Command Performance.

I remember the bafflement I felt when they tailed off in success over here - their last chart single here "Skywriter" didn't even make the Top 20 in 1973 - and of course then came the madness of world fame for my former hero and all that it entailed.

When I heard the news earlier this year of Michael's death - ironically on returning home from a 50th Motown celebration at Wembley - it was with a sadness for the Michael of both our youths... the ever-smiling, whirling dynamo with the perfect afro who introduced me to the ABC's of Motown.