Some enjoy the joke and I’m happy they do, because some of my parodies are almost like appreciations. Iain Duncan Smith is quite tricky.ĭo your subjects see it as a badge of honour or do they react badly? It’s also difficult to do boring people, since they tend not to have a voice. There has to be some motivation to spark it. I like nonsensical humour but not purposeless humour. Alan Bennett has been suggested but I can’t see the point of parodying someone I wholeheartedly admire. Is there anyone you’ve struggled to spoof?Īnyone with a distinctive voice can be aped. I’m like a comical version of that fraudulent medium Doris Stokes. This morning I was doing Piers Morgan, Michael Parkinson and the Duchess of York discussing the coronavirus. I might look up someone’s tweets, YouTube clips or articles, steal half their real words, then fluff the rest up. My aim is to make it so each sentence could have been written by the real person but it’s the combination of sentences that makes it ridiculous. There’s been such an explosion of celebrity that the ducks line up for me. But fresh people come along all the time. You’ve been writing your Private Eye diaries for 31 years now. Alan Sugar cancelled coming on Have I Got News for You after I did him, which was gratifying If you’re thinking about your life, past, present and future all merges together, so I try to reflect that. Dogged chronology is untrue to life, too. My system is to cut those boring bits out. I’ve always found exhaustive biographies, which is most of them, boring. How did your multicoloured approach to writing biographies evolve? The others often resented Paul for being the band’s driving force but without him, they wouldn’t have achieved nearly as much. Things like She’s Leaving Home, Eleanor Rigby and Here, There and Everywhere are so beautiful. He not only had this extraordinary genius for melody but for lyrics too.
Paul was the one I always wanted to be and since doing the book, he remains my favourite. I can’t claim a lifelong friendship but he was very pleasant. I briefly met Paul at a gig in 1973 and asked him to sign the only thing I had on me, which happened to be a Roxy Music album. I also remember singing Yellow Submarine at boy scout camp. I was 10 in 1967, so came in at the Sgt Pepper period.
The book is 600 pages but could’ve been 10 times the length.ĭo you remember when you first heard the Beatles? There’s the sociological backdrop, the curious phenomenon of fandom, the array of interesting weirdos in their orbit… It’s endlessly fascinating. Once they became successful, of course, it didn’t make them happier. It’s a complete contrast to Princess Margaret’s, which is a sort of stationary life. Very, because the Beatles story has got everything.
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