There's nothing quite like the nostalgia you feel for something you can't actually remember. It's that golden-age fallacy that things were better, or in this case cooler, "back then". It's like Tony Blair's Cool Britannia hijacking of the 60s spirit he wasn't old enough to swing in. For me (don't laugh) it's the 80s.

I was only a toddler as the decade ended, and the only real memories I have of it involve struggling with the concept of a spoon and unscheduled bowel evacuations. But my mind has created a fictional photo album of borrowed images that feel as real as my first bike. Images that come from music videos, TV and, most of all, movies.

Growing up just after the 80s, the movies I loved the most were either directed by John Hughes or starred Michael J Fox. For me, the fact that Hughes and Fox never worked together is a greater artistic tragedy than Mozart's premature death. But what we do have is the Robert Zemeckis masterpiece: Back to the Future.

I don't remember the first time I watched Back to the Future. To me it has always been there. To me, Marty McFly is like an older brother. And like most younger brothers, all I really wanted was to be more like him.

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Even though I'm now almost a decade older than the character, I still want to wear his clothes (as I write, I'm wearing some fairly tight jeans and, I'm sorry to admit, some self-consciously retro Nike trainers), have a girlfriend like Jennifer and skateboard while The Power of Love plays in the background. In fact, I wanted to ride a skateboard so much when I was younger that I was reduced to borrowing a friend's snakeboard (remember them) and wiggling my hips like dying Elvis in a desperate attempt at forward motion. Unlike in the opening scene of the film, no pulchritudinous aerobics class waved to me. The only attention I did receive was from a 10-year-old boy who shouted "wanker" at me as I snaked by; Michael J Fox would have somehow tricked him into falling into a massive pile of manure.

But, for all his confidence and cool, there was just something ever so slightly vulnerable about Marty McFly. The odd stutter and stumble that made him relatable in a way that, say, Ferris Bueller could never be. Not blessed with the self-confidence of a drunk Bill Clinton, I've always found Bueller's supreme unflappability a little terrifying, and wholly alien. And I can't be the only one who, by the end of his day off, wants to fling soggy Weetabix into Matthew Broderick's smug little face? No, Michael J Fox as Marty McFly was just the right combination of cooler-than-you-could-ever-be and realistic.

The thing I found particularly appealing about Fox was the way his characters always stood up to bullies. They were diminutive of size but big of pluck. In Teen Wolf, Fox's weedy Scott Howard took on the nasty hulking jock and won – although he did have the advantage of turning into a mythical beast whenever it took his fancy. And in the Back to the Future trilogy, the main storyline was McFly's struggle against his nemesis Biff, who, in real life, would be able to crumple Fox like a wet matchstick, such was the size difference. It's the classic David and Goliath battle, just with hover boards instead of slings.

I can't envisage a time I will ever not want to be more like Marty McFly. One day I'll be back to struggling with spoons and bowels, but I'll be wearing old trainers, a red "life preserver" and jeans so tight they will cure my deep vein thrombosis. Hopefully, that will be so far in the future, we won't need roads.

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