Our story begins a long time ago, but not in a galaxy far, far away, because that would be another thing entirely.
It is 1988. Or maybe it is 1989? Difficult to remember really, because this story begins about thirty-four years ago, and memory is a strange beast at the best of times.

Anyway, it is the tail end of the 1980's, and a young g.man is very much in love with a very beautiful girl.
He's punching above his weight, and he knows it. So despite the relationship lasting for about a year, there is always the spectre of the inevitable break-up loitering in the shadows.

Regardless, it is the best of times, and many happy days are spent hanging out with her at her parents house where she still lives.
A reasonably affluent family, they have one of those big motorised satellite dishes in the back garden, which lets them tune in to garbage from all over Europe on the telly. It's just what people did when Sky was in it's infancy, and it would lead to prolonged bouts of the sort of channel hopping that would now leave us speechless at the pointlessness of it all.

MTV was the thing back then. A golden period when it was probably at it's zenith and still actually played non-stop music. 
But this was MTV Europe, which meant lots of hip young French VJs in acid wash jeans, and more Europop than you could shake a stick at. This was no bad thing however, as the young g.man had always harboured a secret love of Europe's cheesiest artform, and he would happily sit for hours on the couch, wrapped up in the arms of his love, with this nonsense playing in the background.

So where is this story going you ask yourself? Well this is where we get to the crux of the tale.
There was one video that they used to play reasonably often. The song wasn't particularly memorable, but the accompanying video was a very odd, melancholy affair that would stick in g.man's head for the rest of his life. 
What was that song again?

Time passed. The relationship ended. The world continued to spin, but somewhere in the deep recesses of g.man's brain, a memory of that video lingered, and as it gently gnawed at his soul, it would turn into a thirty four year long quest to work out what the hell the video was, and to see it again.

This of course was a fruitless quest, as it's beginnings pre-date the arrival of the internet and the world-at-your-fingertips we live in now, but even with the eventual arrival of the digital highway and ultimately the growth of YouTube, finding this one video proved to be an exercise in futility.

There was a snatch of a melody. Da dee da da da, da da da dee da da da...
The song was in a foreign language that may or may not have been French.
The video was desaturated or black and white.
It featured a man carrying a mannequin.
A group of strange people take the mannequin from him and turn it into the woman of his dreams.
This happens on a beach.
The strange people leave, and the girl becomes a mannequin again.
The man is left distraught.

...and that's it. That's all g.man had to go on.
Over the years, every now and then, g.man would search the internet for this video.
It wasn't an obsession. It was just one of those things you do when you're bored and have time to kill, but with so little to go on it proved to be a fruitless search.

Time passed. 
G was now in his fifties and resigned to never finding this damn thing.
In early 2022, he thought he had a lead, but it lead to nothing.
He had found a channel on YouTube that contained lots of montages of pop songs from different time periods and locations, and there was quite a bit of stuff from the period and location in question. He spent quite some time pouring over this stuff, but no, there was nothing. Perhaps the video hadn't been a hit after all, or maybe the artist in question was just obscure and forgotten? Whatever the answer, it wasn't to be found. The trail went dead again.

Time passes.
It is Christmas 2022, and g.man is on the couch, wrapped in the arms of a duvet, fending off the advances of man-flu.
He is not very well, but more importantly he is very bored.
Seeking entertainment, he searches through his subscriptions on YouTube for something to watch. The modern equivalent of channel hopping. Nothing changes really.
Anyway, flicking onto Some random guy's music channel, he notices that one of the most recent uploads is titled: Top Non-English Songs 1988-1991, and with an eyebrow raised, he clicks on it.

Surely after all this time, after all these years, this can't be it?
The video plays. Track after track of Eurobilge flickers in front of his tired eyes. Of course it's not here. All hope is again lost. Ah well.

But hang on a minute...
We get to around the ten minute and forty second mark in the montage and this appears...

...and there's a melody accompanying it. Da dee da da da, da da da dee da da da...
A five second clip of a grainy video.
Dear Lord!
Noting the name of the artist and the track, g.man leaps off the couch and dashes through to the desktop in his office, boots YouTube and types the information into the search bar.
It's there! 
But is this really it?
After all this time?
The video plays...and a wry smile appears on g.man's face


It has taken thirty-four years of tilting at windmills, but g.man's quest is at an end.

Coda.
And there you have it. It was Sans Contrefaçon by Mylène Farmer, and was apparently a big hit in France at the end of the 80's.
Is it the greatest song ever? No, of course it isn't. It's not not even particularly good, though the accompanying arthouse video is interesting for it's weirdness and unusually bleak ending, but there you have it, a lifelong itch has been scratched, nothing has changed, and the world continues to spin. G.man however is content in the knowledge that by sheer bloody-mindedness he has finally found this damn thing, and will never have to look for it again.

So there you go. A shaggy dog story for Christmas, in an otherwise pointless new thread.
That being said, if anyone has a similar tale to tell, or is haunted by a piece of lost media, then I guess this is as good a place as any to post about it.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

g.man