Whether it was because your childhood sweetheart found someone else to push on the swings, or your live-in paramour delivered the lily-livered line: I love you, but I’m not in love with you – Breaking up, as The Walker Brothers sang in 1965, is so very hard to do.

Plenty of books have been written on the subject, and certainly there have been films – few will forget the sight of Bridget Jones clad in tracksuit bottoms, choosing Vodka and Chaka Khan over male-inflicted misery and being eaten by dogs.

However it’s music, where the jilted and the broken-hearted really get to vent their spleen.

Ian Curtis may have warned that Love Would Tear Us Apart, but Gloria Gaynor made sure to iterate that once her darling had walked out that door, he wouldn’t be welcome anymore.

Beyonce too proved she was a survior and not goin’ to give up, Dylan dealt with his discarder by asking her not to think twice and Carly Simon has kept a lorry-load of exes wondering – Just who is so vain?

But one of the greatest break-up songs ever written has to be none other than the bittersweet Maggie May, penned by leather clad lothario Rod Stewart.

With this in mind, on Thursday night I headed down to The Horns in Watford, for what was promised to be the ultimate Rod Stewart tribute act – The Rod Stewart Experience.

And an experience it certainly was. Garry Pease aka Rod, managed to draw a considerable crowd, with reminiscing rockers and wobbly-kneed women twistin’ the night away.

Managing not one, not two, but three costume changes during his set, the charismatic crooner careered through all the crowd-pleasing hits, from Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? (the ladies certainly did), to Hot Legs, to Stay With Me to Handbags and Gladrags.

Apart from in a football stadium, never before have I seen so many middle-aged men link arms, sway from side-to-side and chant in unison when You Wear It Well was played.

I love Rod Stewart. I can’t think of any man who has ever come close so securing a place in my heart than the weathered warbler.

So thankfully Garry has every hip thrust, head shake and growl down to a fine art – even the blonde bombshell himself would be impressed.

The last song of the night was none other than Maggie May, but by this time, I too was on the dancefloor throwing my body about with merciless abandon, forgetting its true meaning.

As the crowd surged back and forth, repeating the mantra : “Oh Maggie, I wish I’d never seen your face”, it crossed my mind that this was the perfect climax to the gig.

I may have been kicked (elbowed) in the head, but just like Rod did with Maggie, I’d enjoyed my fleeting relationship with Garry et al in The Horns.