"It's a moment, a defining moment when you know that your favourite band has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. Others call it 'Jumping the Shark.' From that moment on, the band will simply never be the same."

"The precise moment when you know a program, band, actor, politician, or other public figure has taken a turn for the worse, gone downhill; the moment you realise decay has set in."

After my homily to Behaviour, time to play Devil's advocate for a moment.

Now, I know that PSB fans can be a cynical bunch at the best of times, but was there ever a moment where you thought, "they've gone", "they've lost it" and subsequent experience proved you right? Irredeemably right?

Every band has a sell-by date - so I'm not talking about commercial popularity. I'm more interested in the artistic experience. Have Neil and Chris jumped the shark or have they pulled off the rare trick of remaining one step ahead over the last 25 years?

Given the consistent excellence of their output over three decades, I realise this question sounds a little churlish. But this is a fan forum and the little critical rigour that we apply is all that separates us from the lost world of inferior pop duo fandom.

In some ways, you could argue that all pop artists must inevitably decline in some way (the experience diminishes as they get older or you, the fan, gets older, times and fashions change, your priorities and perceptions change, etc). My view is that we're the luckiest pop fans in the world. Our favourite group is still going, still touring, still releasing records of stupendous quality. But, we're different people to the fans we were in 1990, for example. We've aged with the band. Our lives have changed. We've grown up. Our priorities have changed. How can we demand that our heroes be immune to this reality? Would we really want to freeze them in time somewhere in the late 1980s? Could it ever be the same for us even if we could?

Therefore, I'm not here to blame or criticise the PSBs for any perceived artistic decline when that perception of decline may be in the eye of the beholder as much as anything else. I'm more interested in how you, the fan, perceive them over time. Do you feel that your fan experience deteriorated at some point. If so, when was that moment?

I've long pointed at 1994 as their annus horribilis. Liberation was a terrible choice as fourth single from Very, Absolutely Fatuous was Neil as the showbiz creep of Too Many People, and Disco 2 was a wart on the face of their, until then, flawless catalogue. Up to that point, I felt they could do no wrong.

That said, even after that, I could never truly say they lost it. They've always found new ways to confound me. But other subsequent top-of-my-head moments where I thought "this isn't the band I fell in love with" include the ridiculous face-palm New York City Boy Top of the Pops performance, An Audience With Elton John, the butchered single mixes of Numb and I Get Along, and anything featuring E-Smoove and Superchumbo. Am I being picky? Oh yes, but there are only so many songs of praise a guy can warble in any given week. All in all, I'd say they've never really jumped the shark. But they've cleared a few sardines in their time.

Drico.