I’m often asked if Dave Masters from Dead Man Singing was based on any particular musician, and people always seem disappointed when I reply that he wasn’t. As I was creating him, I wanted someone with an undoubted talent, someone who was capable of crafting hit singles that caught the p...

There are very few instances where I’ve loved a book and then loved the film version just as much. Ian McEwan’s Atonement is one example, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity another, and of course The Lord of the Rings remains a towering achievement in both formats (one could even say...

Hothouse Flowers bloomed at around the right time for inclusion in Dead Man Singing, although I wasn’t sure whether Dave Masters himself would have come across them before the events of the book. Their debut album, People (1988) was possibly too recent for Dave to have caught up with before hi...

The things that we hold most precious can sometimes be a bit arbitrary. The faded, tattered Wembley bookmark in the photo is one that I’ve had – and used – for most of my life, certainly getting on for fifty years. It was given to me when I was a football-mad boy, and I have only v...

Another musical love that stems from my first live experience of Richard Thompson. Clive Gregson and Christine Collister were part of his band in those days (those days being, in this case, 1986) as well as making their first steps in a five-album career as a duo. Clive was the more experienced hand...