Young People These Days!

The worst thing about being a failed songwriter is the constant what could have been.

This is compounded in my case by the fact that the only stuff anyone heard was the throw away tunes that I knocked out for a mate one summer in 1981. He went on to record them on an album that sold moderately in Belgium.

When I moved to London, I met a complete stranger who sang one of these pieces in its entirety to me in Soho, such was his excitement at meeting its composer.

On another occasion, I turned up in the print room of a City firm as a temp for a one-off night shift. In the early hours, the DJ (now a TV regular) played one of these tracks, much to my astonishment. I turned to my new (wary) colleague and, pointing to the radio, proclaimed "I wrote this!" Not surprisingly, he looked at me as though I had declared myself to be The King Of Brazil!

And here we are in 2009 and I discover that a bunch of kids in West Sonoma County, California, who weren't born when I was performing, are belting out some sort of version of a song that I completed within half an hour twenty eight years ago.

No, honestly.