IT’S a relief to hear our First Minister, leader of our country, most powerful Scotswoman for more than 300 years, is a Duranie.

Nicola Sturgeon is a woman of taste. She knows what’s important.

Duran Duran, with handsome Le Bon and dreamy John, strange Nick Rhodes and, eh, the other two, were excellent.

Thank goodness she wasn’t a fan of those lily-livered, moany-faced kings of the hissy-fit Spandau Ballet. (But she says her favourite was ROGER Taylor? Surely she means John? Must be John. John was lovely.)

The Duranies versus the – what WERE Spandau fans called? Spannies? Fan-daus? - debate occupied my friends and I for much of our formative years, when we were discovering all that the innovative and insane 80s music scene had to offer.

(We also obsessed about all the best Scottish acts, of course – Love and Money, His Latest Flame, Fruits of Passion, Hipsway, Goodbye Mr Mackenzie…we weren’t completely daft…)

I have vivid memories of singing along to the Duran Duran videos in my best friend’s living room on a Friday after school, floating in a heady cloud of Impulse body spray and Christian Dior’s Poison (it wasn’t just the hair and the shoulder pads that were big in the 80s, perfumes were MASSIVE. Even the slightest whiff of that fierce fragrance instantly takes me back…)

Now that both bands are back, touring (Duran Duran are in Glasgow on December 6) and recording albums, the debate still rages – at least, among my friends.

“Always a Spandau fan,” one of my friends is adamant.

“Simon Le Bon was a bit poncey.”

“Duran Duran,” disagrees another.

“They have brilliant pop songs and always seemed to be having the best fun that anyone has ever had in the history of humanity.”

My boys, aged 11 and 7, are into John Newman, Pharell Williams, One Direction, Amy McDonald, The Beatles and The Muppets, but they have a healthy respect for 80s music, having been ‘encouraged’ to listen to it of an evening, drying the dishes, when Absolute Eighties is on the radio.

(This is one of my current obsessions, along with Tattoo Fixers on Channel 4. How weirdly compelling is that programme? It makes me feel ill, and yet I can’t stop watching it.)

Anyway, the boys get in on the argument too.

“Duran Duran did a Bond theme, which makes them pretty cool,” ponders the 11-year-old.

“BUT,” admonishes the seven-year-old, “Spandau Ballet did Gold, and that gets played whenever anyone wins a medal at the Olympics, and THAT’S pretty cool.”

One of friends went to see Duran Duran in Glasgow last time they played, having not been allowed to go when she was a teenager because her dad said she was too young.

I was too scared to go, in case I was left sobbing, all my childhood memories smashed into smithereens by the sight of ageing, balding blokes, no longer floppy-fringed and sultry, dad-dancing all over the stage.

Was she disappointed?

“Hell, no,” she sighed. “It was absolutely worth the wait…..”