You’ve probably followed the recent buzz about the Golden Globe awards. Apparently everyone was all hot and bothered about whether or not Ricky Gervais would be invited back after he managed to insult half of Hollywood’s untouchable stars during the previous year’s edition. Of course, I only heard about last year’s fuss this year, but was rather amused to see footage of Mr Gervais tear into a string of hallowed names. More power to him, I thought. And then I caught a segment when he called Bruce Willis “Ashton Kutcher’s dad”, and it set me thinking. ’Cause I remember when Willis wanted to be a singer. And he wasn’t the only one. Gervais himself fronted a surprisingly good combo called Seona Dancing (pronounced more like Shawna Dancing). It was a gloomy 1980s synth group clearly influenced by David Bowie and Depeche Mode which Ricky formed with his college mate, Bill McRae. Seona Dancing faded after a pair of great singles (More To Lose and Bitter Heart), but are really worth tracking down if you’re into that sort of thing.

Willis, on the other hand, was a huge star when he decided to cut the album The Return Of Bruno. At that time, he was playing opposite Cybill Shepherd in the TV series Moonlighting, but managed to score some airtime with the fiesty Respect Yourself and a rather less inspiring cover of Under The Boardwalk. In fact it seemed like every cheesy actor of his time was allowed the freedom of a studio, with Don Johnson (I remember him striking poses through a song called Heartbeat) and David Hasselhoff (big in Germany, so I’m told) also making albums at the time. In fact, Eddie Murphy made five of them, hitting big with the cringe-worthy Party All The Time.