Writing
I have written four books. Get me. I'm currently working on a fifth.
The first book is a novel entitled DATED. I wrote it in 2001. It has about 600 pages and is really, really bad. Even if I die and become massively, posthumously famous, I never want this stupid piece of shit novel to see the light of day. It features about ten principal characters and isn’t about anything. The “plot” kicks in about halfway through (after somebody informed me there ought to be one). I sent the manuscript off to a bunch of literary agents but they all turned it down. But then I did write it (and actually finish it) so I suppose it counts as having written a book. I think the experience taught me both how to write and how not to write. So there we are.
The second book is a humorous and irreverent half memoir, half Heavy Metal primer called HELL BENT FOR LEATHER: Confessions of a Heavy Metal Addict, and it was published (hooray) by HarperCollins in the UK and USA in 2004 and 2005.
My third book is a humorous and irreverent book about my journey through the world of classical music entitled ROCK ME AMADEUS: When Ignorance Meets High Art, Things Can Get Messy, and was published by Penguin Books in the UK and Commonwealth in 2006 and 2007.
My fourth book is called HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON, and follows my attempts to improve myself through doing as much volunteer work as possible over a two year period. I worked in a charity shop, picked up litter, taught pensioners, entertained pensioners (not as easy as it sounds), been a hospital radio DJ, helped asylum seekers, worked with the homeless, walked 25 miles alongside righteous hippies to highlight climate change, been a porter on a steam train line and much, much more. It's been an ODYSSEY. Like Homer's, only with more pensioners. This one's out in large-size paperback in April 2009, published by Atlantic Books.
The subject of my fifth book is currently under wraps. It's not a novel.
Below are two exclusive deleted sections...
...from the original (Hell Bent...-) manuscript that were cut by my wise editor Nick Davies. They were cut because of narrative flow, and not because they were complete shit, alright?
The first one, The Wonderful World of the Metal Press, is rather boring, I apologise. If you were into metal in the 80s it might be quite interesting, but otherwise I’d skip it.
The second one, A chance encounter with Hanoi Rocks’... , was originally tacked on to the bottom of the Hanoi Rocks bit of the book, but was cut because it was chronologically confusing, as well as self-indulgent.
Chapter twelve: The Wonderful World of the Metal Press
A few weeks ago I emailed a gentleman named Malcolm Dome, asking him for an interview for this book. He said he’d be delighted to help, and we fixed up a date. We arranged to meet in a Metal bar just off the Charing Cross Road called the CroBar, the night before last, at seven thirty. I arrived at seven twenty-five edgy and nervous – this was my first ever interview situation and Malcolm had been a bit of an idol to me in my youth – but he didn’t seem to be here yet. There was a drunk bald man sitting at the bar, bantering with the heavily tattooed Australian barpeople, and I asked him if he was Malcolm.
“Well I wasn’t the last time I looked, but I might’ve been this morning!” he said to Antipodean guffaws. I smiled nervously and thanked him and went to sit at a table at the back and fiddled with my bag. Then I tested my tape recorder that I bought at Dixon’s last week. I’d tested it about ten times already, held mock interviews with friends in a variety of noisy locations, and I reckoned I had the hang of it by now. It was easy.
A chance encounter with Hanoi Rocks’ Andy McCoy in the railway station in Helsinki, Finland
A few years ago I was in Helsinki on a business trip. Helsinki had excited me every time I’d been there; not just because it was Russian-looking and spartan and cold and epic and buzzing and the air tasted of marble, but because I was in the Home of Hanoi, and that made me feel good – like I was residing in my own spiritual bosom.
This time I was there with my wife, it was her first time here and we were making a weekend of it. I met her at the airport and she felt the Helsinki magic straight away (she’s as big a Hanoi fan as me). We dropped her bag at the hotel and went out for a walk. We came to the train station, and strolled through with our necks craning. There’s a bar at one end, through an imposing doorway. In its mouth, a scuffle was going on and we could see the back of a hefty bouncer, earpiece and all, getting entangled with somebody unseen by us and having a heated discussion in Finnish as they grappled. We all love a car-crash: Faye (my wife) and I hung around with hands in pockets trying to look like we weren’t watching. The bouncer was winning – he tossed his combatant out into the station hall via his collar. It was Andy McCoy.