| Book, 260 pages. $10/£7 |
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"We have no extradition treaties with the past. That is, we can't bring our younger selves back into the present to account for our doings there. At best, all we may have are a few scribbled notes on faded paper and perhaps a handful of faded Polaroids to tell us that events ever really happened at all.
"I am the same age as our current Prime Minister, Mr Blair. Both of us must have gone to an infants' school with its smells of stale milk in the classroom and Izal in the outside lavatories. Both of us must have learned to read with Janet and John books. Both of us must have pored over comic books on wet Saturdays, known the smell of coal fires in the rain and the jangle of The Shadows from kitchen radios. Both of us must have awoken to the songs of The Beatles and dreamed of playing guitars.
"Later, though, much later, when adolescence came, coinciding as it did with a period of social and cultural change at least as potent as the hormones coursing through us, only one of us hurled himself saucer-eyed into the maelstrom with no thought of where or when he might emerge. I'm rather glad it was me. I wouldn't fancy being Prime Minister. And I'd hate to think that Mr Blair might have conducted the kind of experiments on his health and sanity that I once did. You wouldn't want a bloke like me running the country. On the other hand, I don't think Mr Blair could have fronted a glam-rock band from Colchester in quite my haphazard style. That must remain his loss.
"Comedy, like tragedy, is nearly always born of dashed expectation. And oh, I have had my turn at the wheel of that wonky ship, the Dashed Expectation. God bless her and all who sail in her. These chapters are some of the entries from her log book."
"With a wit quotient higher than his stack-heeled boots and a breadth of detail broader than his loon pants, Martin Newell pulls the pin on the glam grenade of the seventies. Stand back - the laughter will hurt." - Andy Partridge, XTC
