Graham and Chris return to 1986 for the second half of their 40th-anniversary Please deep dive, placing Pet Shop Boys’ debut into the wider world it landed in - Cold War tension, Chernobyl panic, post-Live Aid earnestness, brick-sized mobile phones and a pop landscape buzzing with the likes of A‑ha, Five Star and Madonna.

From there they go track‑by‑track, and enter Advision’s world of talking calculators, existential mathematics, singing lessons, sax solos, misfiring sequencers, kebab-house retsina, studio parties, drunken TV appearances, tubular bells and truculent trombonists. Along the way they unearth lost demos, unlikely influences, rare remixes, and some of Neil’s first and finest lyrical blueprints. 

What emerges is a love letter to London, to escape, to youth and to hedonism. Forty years on, and Please still sounds like the beginning of something.

This season the Pod Cast Boys are joining Pet Shop Boys in supporting War Child — donate via our JustGiving page and get your name in the credits of a future episode: https://www.justgiving.com/page/pet-shop-boys-in-depth-podcast

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