He waves goodbye and says to me: People don’t help each other enough these days

He waves goodbye and says to me: “People don’t help each other enough these days.”We go upstairs to the press office to do the interview Les has a cup of tea and smokes a lot. But still, he is posing on the lawn, larking around for an ancient Fleet Street photographer.”I have to say, Les is being awfully game about all of this,” says the record company press officer. Then the photo session is over and Les helps the photographer back down the path. He sued them, and they sued him, and they’ve all sued the men in suits who were supposed to look after their money.He won’t earn anything from this new album; he didn’t write the songs in the first place, and any royalties that might be due to him will probably disappear into another Byzantine court case. (And yes, Les sang on all those mindlessly catchy hit singles, despite the fact that session musicians played the group’s instruments in the studio more often than not.)
These days Les makes a living by going out on the road and singing his old hits, though he has a new band to back him because he doesn’t talk to the rest of the Rollers. There’s a Seventies revival, apparently, and suddenly the Bay City Rollers are so hideously dated that they’re almost hip. The record company is also releasing a megamix of “Bye Bye Baby” (number one in March 1975), a jingly-jangly pop song that revealed the Rollers in all their tinny glory.

Les used to be the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers, a group of five fresh-faced Scottish boys who sold 70 million records and played to screaming girls all over the world. Les left the Bay City Rollers in 1978, when the band was already on the skids. But now he’s promoting a new album, or rather, a new album of old songs – the Bay City Rollers Greatest Hits. This time, she has thrown her wedding hat in the bin.All names have been changed.

LES McKEOWN, former teen idol, now 38 years old, is having his picture taken on the lawn in front of Arista Records. He’s grinning and he’s got his thumbs up, just like he did on the countless front covers of Jackie magazine 20 years ago. In fact, subsequently she had to completely cut him out of her life “He betrayed me and stole money from me,” she says. “We had a divorce cake with candles,” she says, “it was symbolic of us splitting up in friendship We even had two witnesses It was like getting married I suppose I saw it as going full circle. We celebrated our marriage, now we were celebrating that our friendship survives our divorce.”Sadly, Patricia and her husband did not break their emotional ties. “The burning and tearing- up are good as long as they are not used to deny reality. I think they could be healing if used correctly.”Patricia, a nurse from west London, managed (she thought successfully) to celebrate her divorce with her ex-husband in the pub Even the former best man was present.

It was very emotional and I don’t think it worked at that time I left the next day. But it felt a healthy thing to do.”Separation rituals are not always cosy shared experiences. It is not unknown for betrayed partners to cut up or burn the offending partner’s clothes or personal possessions or spray his or her car with paint. A Welsh friend of mine decided to deal with her husband’s girlfriend in a symbolic way. “I took a photograph of his girlfriend, threw it down the toilet and shat on it,” she says. “It felt wonderful.”Some people try to remove all trace of their former partners from their lives by, for instance, destroying all the photos of them Others take more drastic action. “I think it’s quite common for men to walk off with all the woman’s money,” says Sally, a mature student from west London “My husband went and drew out all my cash from the bank.

I think it was about him not liking the power of independent women. He also went and made someone else pregnant straightaway, which happens a lot.”So is a personally tailored ritual a good way of getting a dead relationship out of your system? Penny Mansfield of One Plus One, the marriage and partnership charity, is dubious. “It’s important to recognise that it is a point of transition. Separation rituals should be about reinforcing what you are rather than being destructive about what you’ve relinquished.” She would not be keen on setting fire to a former partner’s belongings.Agony aunt Susi Hayman is more open-minded. It should not, therefore, be surprising if couples invent their own ways to mark the unhappy event.”We took the white ribbon that had been on our wedding Bentley and wound it round into a figure of eight,” says Eric, a teacher from Somerset, “then cut it and it fell apart.