It was like going back to the 1970s as Osmonds mania hit Manchester at the city's Palace Theatre with the arrival of the new musical of the American boyband's life story. And with original Osmonds bandmate Jay Osmond hitting the red carpet, he was near-mobbed by fans eager to get a chat, a hug and a photo with the much-loved star.
Jay has written the new autobiographical musical sharing for the first time the journey of he and his brothers to worldwide super-stardom as The Osmonds. It follows the highs and lows of life with the band's biggest hits soundtracking it all, like Love Me For A Reason, Let Me In, Puppy Love and Crazy Horses.
And at the star-studded launch night in Manchester this week, fans got an even bigger treat when Jay jumped on stage at the finale to perform a jumping encore of Crazy Horses to the delight of the cheering audience. They had already delivered a standing ovation to the stars of the musical before the surprise reveal of Jay.
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The musical is here at Manchester's Palace Theatre all week. And Jay told the MEN the city has a special place in the history of the band.
When the brothers from Utah first arrived here in the 1970s there were scenes of fan mania in Manchester. Jay memorably recalls girls broke chairs at one venue in the city as they were so excited jumping up and down when their idols arrived on stage.
Jay said: "Manchester holds such a history for me and my family. We were here in 1971 when we first started and every year we'd come back. It holds a very special part in our lives and in fact there's a person in the play one of our fans, Wendy, and she's from Manchester."
Recalling the band's first Manchester show in 1971, Jay said: "It was like our first Manchester show and when we got here, they had these wooden chairs back then and the fans were jumping up and down on top of them and they broke the lot of them! It was a time of mania. Paul McCartney said you are experiencing mania, and it was true. It was crazy times."
Jay added it was that passion from the fans that he and his brothers found so special. He said: "Do you know what I love about the UK? The people here are so real and wear their hearts on their sleeves.
"We bonded so well with the people over here and I'm so grateful that they accepted our family. The people of the UK they mean so much and that's why I wanted to start this play in the UK because it's where so much of it happened."
Jay wrote the musical that has been premiering in the UK this year with hopes to take it to the West End and on tour to the US next. He said: "Everything in this musical it took me five years to write it and I wanted to write from my eyes how I saw the family, and the situations that affected our lives. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, I was in the process five years ago writing a book about finding my voice in a big family. And I ran into this great theatre producer and he said why don't you put it in a living memoir, in live theatre.
"Finally after five years it's done. It was the hardest thing to crunch 60 years and 30 songs into this. It starts out with the 50th anniversary and then we go back in time when Walt Disney first discovered us.
"There's the older brothers and the younger brothers, father and mother, Marie and Jimmy and all the other people in our lives who had a major effect in our lives. I went through all my journals and thought what do people really want to know about The Osmonds. A lot of the stories are about what caused those songs to evolve."
"I take people on a journey about our lives, I show them how we were raised, how our parents taught us, the hard work we went through. We started out as a band because our two older brothers were deaf, we started this little group to raise money to buy hearing aids for them.
"A lot of people don't know that. They had a very important part of our upbringing and our life."
Jay joined the stars of the show on stage on Tuesday night, and said he's been so proud to see the cast bring to life so vividly all the real people in his life. He said: "It was really fun to see the casting part of this. My father, he was such a good man, very strong, very disciplined.
"It's hard to play that but Charlie does a great job, Nicola who plays my mother does a wonderful job. Alex, who plays me, it's like talking in a mirror it's so weird!
"It's amazing. My sister Georgia, who plays Marie, you would think it is Marie. Oh it does amazing things to your mind, even I got tricked into thinking it's us up there!
"It's not a tribute show, but it's a story about a band of brothers who really watched each other's back. It's fun to see people standing up in the aisles, laughing and crying, it's a wonderful thing to see this coming out on paper and to see the reviews, wow it's amazing."
Jay and his wife will be in the audience all week here in Manchester, and he says he loves meeting fans (old and new!) before and during the interval of the shows. Even though it does bring to mind those fan mania scenes of old.
He said: "It's fun though, especially in the intervals, my wife and I watch the show, but I love to hear the fan stories in the intervals, their journey with us. It's a big family it really is. We call it a family of friends. We have been through so much together."
Jay was just three years old when he started in the band, which went on to be "discovered" by Walt Disney when he was just 6.
So could The Osmonds get back together in some way in future? Jay says: "We're all doing different things now, so I don't think so. So I wanted people to remember the legacy of the band and what we accomplished here. I wanted our family to live on and people remember This musical means a lot to me it really is my heart and soul. It's been my whole life."
Five years ago Jay and his wife moved from Utah to Chester - and enjoyed their time there before now moving back to America to Wyoming. And while he's back in the north west he said he'd be sure to catch up with friends in Chester as well as visiting some favourite spots here in the region.
He said: "I'm going to go back to Blackpool, we lived right around there too. I love that area, Lytham St Annes, we lived there too so we visit there and we will go back to Chester while we're here. In Manchester, there's so many things we've done here over the years so we're going to see some friends.
"I'm sad that the town hall is under wraps right now, I always loved that area. I love the history of Manchester."
The Osmonds Musical is at the Palace Theatre until Saturday August 13, and then heads on tour to venues across the UK.
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