The pop act Black Lace might have been designed in answer to the question “how do you define uncoolness?”, but their string of raucous, exuberant party hits may outlast the work of many acts who took themselves far more seriously. The fact that in 2003 a team of music critics from Q magazine declared their best known hit, Agadoo, to be “the worst song of all time” has become a perverse kind of badge of honour for the group’s shamelessly crowd-pleasing antics.
Colin Gibb, who has died suddenly aged 70, a former lift engineer, joined the group – which had previously been known under several names including the Impact and Penny Arcade – in 1976, alongside Alan Barton, Steve Scholey and Terry Dobson, though by the time they recorded Agadoo in 1984, they had been whittled down to Barton and Gibb (the latter, at the time, was still using his real surname of Routh).
