In 1986, researchers came across a psychological phenomenon called the “reminiscence bump”. Adults over 40, they found, could give chapter and verse on the stuff that happened in their lives between the ages of 10 and 30.
Ask them what songs were in the top 40 when they were 12, 13 or 14 and they could rattle off titles, chart positions and the clothes Boy George wore on Top of the Pops. Recollections of their favourite teenage football games brought goal scorers, times of goals, sometimes the weather conditions.
