To be played at maximum volume...

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is 40 years old today. At the age of 10, this was the first album I ever bought. I was a precocious child with an ambition to look like David Bowie but bearing an uncanny resemblance to Jimmy Osmond.

Judging from the images of Bowie in 1972, you'd be forgiven for thinking that we all wore shiny space suits and lived in plastic modules. We didn't; we lived in grubby backstreets, wearing man-made fibres in garishly patterned colours and chain smoking Embassy all the while.

I must've spent hours gazing at the back cover to this album (above); the world of Ziggy Stardust was so removed from mine. While Bowie sang about a crumbling future, I was trying so hard to escape the crumbling past. I would have gladly swapped my life in a small Welsh backwater for his dystopia.

Bowie added to the mythology of Ziggy with each appearance and every turn. The press went wild for Ziggy; this androgynous bisexual alien who practiced fellatio on Mick Ronson's guitar. We were shocked, outraged and in love with him. Here he is performing Starman on Top of the Pops. It's hard to imagine now the sense of wonder we all felt when this burst on to our TVs in 1972.