If you speak to any girl of a ‘particular age’ and ask them ‘Donny or David?’ they will know EXACTLY what you mean.  If you ask two or more girls in a group no doubt they will start discussing the merits of their respective crush.


Donny, of course, was Donny Osmond.
Originally one of the Osmond Brothers, the band that your parents were happy for you to like because they were clean living and came from a respectable family. In the 1970s, aside from his success with The Osmonds or with his sister as Donny and Marie, Donny had six top 10 UK singles, and three of them reached number one (Puppy Love, The Twelfth of Never, Young Love).  Donny had already started to fall out of favour with the girls, and then he got married. (How could HE? I was going to marry him!)  As he has discussed many times, he spent a long time in the wilderness before coming back into favour in the mid-1980s.

David Cassidy made his name as Keith Partridge, in the TV show The Partridge Family. His TV persona was as part of a clean living American family, although life off camera was very different.  During the same period as Donny Osmond, David had five top 10 UK singles, and two number ones (How Can I be Sure? Daydreamer/The Puppy Song). He also had chart success as part of The Partridge Family. Life began to fall apart when tragedy struck at one of David’s concerts in 1974, and a young female fan was killed in the crush.  Stories had also started to circulate that David Cassidy was not as clean living as Keith Partridge. Like Donny, David also fell out of favour but continued with his recording career. In recent years he has found himself on tour…with Donny Osmond.

 

No matter how many years pass, no rivalry has every captured the hearts of girls in the same way, no matter how much the media would like to dress it up (Spandau Ballet v Duran Duran; Blur v Oasis; Take That v East 17).  Everytime I mention Donny Osmond on twitter I get comments like ‘I’ll fight you for him!’ or “He is all mine!”  So girls, let’s do a quick poll… which camp were you in, Donny or David?