Can you imagine Prince Charles getting jiggy-with-it, Saturday-Night- Fever style? Of course not. He's the archetypal repressed Royal, the shuffling, mumbling, hand-wringing epitome of British class stagnation, for heaven's sake. Charlie a gurning, crazy-eyed, disco dervish? Yeah, and the English Queen Mother was giving it loads down her local drum-and-bass club at the weekend.
We'll probably never know whether Charles was sufficiently invigorated by the presence at his 30th birthday party of 1970s plastic-soul divas The Three Degrees to live out any latent John Travolta fantasies. What is undisputable is that the all-female Philadelphia vocal trio probably had enough problems to contend with - a terminally unhip saccharine sub-Supremes sound, a tragic appetite for maudlin sentimentality jarringly out of step with the epoch's self-celebratory superficiality - when Charles famously outed them as his favourite group and sent their already waning popularity into irreversible tail-spin.
Oddly, after 20 years dutifully lugging a larger-than-life melange of big wigs, old hits and irony-free nostalgia around the ghoulish twilight of the provincial cabaret circuit, The Three Degrees remain effusive about Prince Charles's fumbled professions of affection. The group's unofficial leader, Valerie Christie, positively lights up with pride when his spectral presence (inevitably) drifts into the conversation.
"We certainly don't go around boasting that we are still his favourite band. All we say is that we were his favourite band at that time," she explains in her pulse-quickeningly delicious Foxy-Brown drawl. "And besides, it isn't like we're really good friends with him or anything. We haven't seen Prince Charles in such a long time. The last occasion was just before his wedding."
Under the tutelage of Philadelphia soul studio whiz Richard Barrett and acclaimed song writing duo Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the Three Degrees enjoyed modest success in the late 1960s, but it was only after a line-up re-shuffle which saw Holiday and Sheila Ferguson take up vocals and 1974's singles double whammy of Year of Decision and When Will I See You Again? that they gained international prominence. A slew of hits - Take Good Care Of Your- self, Woman In Love and My Simple Heart - followed but, even as disco went supernova, things began to turn sour. Prince Charles's bewildering patronage briefly raised The Three Degrees's profile; however, their music was becoming increasingly bland for contemporary tastes.
It was all just too darned slushy. Disco and soul were fragmenting, becoming febrile, lascivious breeding grounds of experimentation and urban expression; rap and hip-hop had emerged, teeth bared, nostrils flaring, from the pop-culture morass. Prince Charles may have considered The Three Degrees cutting edge, but he was on his own.
Today the group's legacy is modest: their records flitter on at the edges of drive-time soft radio consciousness, while in concert they re-work forgotten hits by Terence Trent D'Arby and Whitney Houston to audiences that can't tell the difference between kitsch and naff any more. Thirty-five years on the road - hardly a glorious twilight. Thing is, the Three Degrees really don't care what we think. Trends bloom and wilt; they keep on doing their thing. They make a living, people come to their shows and have a good time. Don't analyse it.
"The bottom line is that we really, really enjoy what we do," says Christie. "Always have. That's how we keep going. The Three Degrees have always been mainly a live group. The stuff we did in the studio always took second place. We just love doing what we do. We always try to bring a sense of fun to our show. That's why we like to dress up in big wigs and so forth. It's not only a musical performance but a whole seventies experience."
And they don't just appeal to oldies, either. "We get all types at our shows. The crowds have never really changed. I see the same mix of people in our audiences that we had when we started out. I guess what we do appeals to a wide demographic of people. I think there is a universal appeal to our music. We talk about emotions that are shared by a lot of people."
Christie even goes so far as to claim some responsibility for black music's current Zeit-geist-defining prominence. "A lot of the music that is popular today - rap, hip-hop, all of that - is pretty much the same as what we were doing all those years ago. It's just been reworked to fit the times. I've seen my kids getting into stuff, and they can't believe it when I tell them we were doing the same thing way back when."
The Three Degrees - spiritual forerunners of Public Enemy and Puff Daddy? Remember folks, you heard it here first.
The Three Degrees play the National Concert Hall, Dublin, tonight