MAUREEN COLEMAN: Since my early teens I've been OBSESSED with the angular cheekbones and rebellious vibe of one Paul Weller - here's how he has TWICE proved to me that whoever said you should never meet your heroes hasn't a clue!

The heartbreak felt when a favourite band splits up is something many young music fans must contend with and I was no different.

Back in my early teens, when my classmates were arguing over who was prettier — Duran Duran’s John Taylor or Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp — I was obsessed with The Jam frontman.

Paul Weller. His face, with its angular cheekbones and sombre expression, stared down at me from the posters on my bedroom walls.

The poetry of his anti-establishment, often angry, song lyrics appealed to the rebel in me, whether he was singing about the double standards of posh Eton schoolboys or being badly beaten up and mugged in the London Underground.

When Weller announced that The Jam were disbanding, I was devastated.

Who else could come up with a line like, ‘And you find out life isn’t like that. It’s so hard to understand why the world is your oyster but your future’s a clam?’

There was Elvis Costello or Glenn Tilbrook perhaps, but neither was Weller.

The pain was somewhat eased when he reinvented himself not long after as one half of soul/funk/pop outfit The Style Council. I followed him then, through his progress to successful solo artist. I follow him still. Over four decades on, he remains my hero.

Then I got to meet him. Back in December 2003, Weller played a gig at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall. I’d seen him live before, in both Belfast and Dublin, but on this occasion, I was commissioned by my then news editor to write an article about my longstanding devotion. 

It was read by the promoter, who decided to surprise me with a backstage meet-and-greet.

Along with a pal and a local radio presenter, we were ushered into a small room to await his arrival. When he appeared, I almost fainted on the spot.

The promoter later teased me, ‘Maureen, I always thought you were cool until I saw you with Weller.’ 

I was a gibbering wreck as he signed autographs and posed for photos. The meeting was all too brief but momentous. 

As he left the room, I called after him, ‘Tin Soldier by Small Faces is my favourite song too!’ He looked back, smiled at my desperate attempt to make some kind of connection and said, ‘Great taste.’

I may have shed a few tears then, such was my giddy excitement.

I met him again in 2010 when he came back to headline Belsonic. I’d written another article about him — I know, I know, there’s a pattern emerging here, no flies on me! — and one of the Belsonic team came across him backstage at Custom House Square, reading said piece. ‘I know the journalist who wrote that, she’s a big fan,’ he told Weller and for the second time in my life, I was invited backstage.

Let me tell you, there’s something surreal about sitting in a tiny trailer, your knees pressed against the knees of the man you’ve adored since your teens. 

He offered me a beer — he was on water, having given up booze — cracked it open and handed it over. ‘I like your hairstyle, it suits you,’ he said as way of a conversation-starter.

We sat in that trailer then and chatted like two old pals catching up. Weller turned the tables on me, asking me how and why I’d gotten into journalism, did I like my job, what was the mod scene like in Belfast. 

His father had died the previous year, and I’d lost mine on Valentine’s Day, just a few months earlier. We talked about loss, life and music and I told him again that Tin Soldier was my top tune.

There was no desperation this time though — a connection, albeit fleeting, had already been made.

Eventually, the Belsonic lads knocked on the door of the trailer and asked Weller if he was OK. ‘I’m more than OK,’ he replied as he gave me a huge hug.

The lads took a few photographs then, me grinning maniacally, Weller looking as cool and composed as ever.

I said my goodbyes and wandered off into the night to find a taxi. There wasn’t a sinner around by this stage, the Custom House Square crowds having long exited the venue, so the poor taxi driver had to listen to my ‘oh my God, I’ve just met Paul Weller’ all the way home.

When the photograph came through in the early hours of the morning, I was beyond thrilled. It was perfect — a deliriously happy fan wrapped in a bear hug from her favourite rock star. 

A large, blown-up print now adorns my office wall at home, that direct gaze still staring down at me, but this time with a smile.

They say never meet your heroes. I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but they haven’t a clue. That particular year had been a tough one for me, what with losing Dad and having to undergo emergency surgery for a gangrenous appendix. But hanging out with Weller was just the pick-me-up I needed.

Maybe in another life, he might have been serenading me with You’re The Best Thing or You Do Something To Me. A girl can dream, can’t she?

Weller is back in Ireland this week, performing at Fairview Park in Dublin tonight. If you’re going along, you’re in for a treat. Who knows, someone might even hand him a copy of Magazine, and he’ll read this very column. What is it ‘they’ say? Third time’s a charm.