FIRST love. An experience which burns your soul, sears your heart and turns your stomach into a wonky tumble dryer.

Writer/musician Dave Anderson has rewound the clock back to 1960 to tell of his own teenager in love tale in this week’s Oran Mor play.

Set in the west coast, in a jukebox café, Christina Strachan stars as the young Dave’s mum in The Day I Found The Blues.

However, when Christina tells her own puppy love tale it entirely reflects the drama and poignancy of Dave’s own heartfelt story.

Hers was also a holiday romance, and it too was consumed with a passion only matched by the delights of a 99, two scoops of ice cream and a Flake on top.

“I had my first kiss at Butlins in Ayr at fifteen with a young footballer called Stewart Lee who came from Southampton,” Christina says smiling in recall.

“We took to the dance floor and he kissed me while You Take My Breath Away was playing.

“I was so concerned my mum could see us snogging so I dragged him away to a chalet and we carried on.”

And did the relationship carry on?

“It did. The passion, that feeling lasted the whole summer and I knew I wanted to see him again.”

The young couple did meet, aided and abetted by parents who realised the strength of the puppy love before them and had swopped addresses.

“I went down to Southampton, and it was fantastic. Except that he kept coming into my room at night. He thought we should take the relationship to the next level.

“But I was fifteen I just wasn’t ready for all of that.”

The teenager knew she had to make a very grown-up decision. It spite of her love for the young man, she knew she had to end the relationship, and with dignity.

“When I got home I got my best friend to call him and chuck him for me,” she says of the time-honoured tactic that made perfect sense.

She adds, grinning; “When I joined Facebook I had a look at him to see how he turned out as a grown up. And he lasted all right.”

But Christina had another passion at the time. Mad keen on performing since the age of nine, as a young teenager she saw a telly credit for the Italia Conte stage school in London.

The youngster, who sings and is a songwriter, auditioned and was accepted. And then begged her parents for the chance to join the jazz hands kids in London.

Eventually they agreed. “I was fourteen when I left home, all spikey hair and tomboy looking. And it was great experience to begin with, but I missed home. And some of the people at the school were really horrible.

“On my first day, for example, a girl who looked like Naomi Campbell came up to me and said ‘God you’re flipping ugly’ (Not actual word used).

“After four years I was really disillusioned with the whole business so I came back home.

“I did all sorts of jobs, worked in my dad’s pub, and travelled around until I decided to apply for drama school, aged almost twenty four.”

Christina knew she had made the right choice, and went on to work steadily in theatre.

“Before I met my husband and had the kids (she has two) I toured a lot.

“I once appeared in a theatre in Anchorage, Alaska. After the show one night I was in this grotty bar, with sawdust on the floor and one local guy asked me if we had ‘car radios’ in Scotchland?

“I stared at him – he turned out to be a car salesman - and said, ‘You’re standing here drinking out of a jam jar and asking me if we have car radios. We invented radio!’ Now, I know that’s not true, but we did invent television so it helped make my point.”

The story highlights Christina Strachan’s livewire personality, (she also fronts a funk-soul band, Tina and the Groove) an energy she will most certainly bring to this week’s play.

“It’s a great piece, with great songs,” she says of the play which also stars Dave Anderson as the narrator, Davey Anderson playing the young man’s dad (ie, his own grandfather) Gregor MacKay as young Dave, Marianne Pedley and Fraser Speirs.

“And it’s a story about teenage love. How can someone not be captivated by that?”

• The Day I Found The Blues, Oran Mor, until Saturday.