Don’t you just love the attention to detail paid by the journalistic profession?

A couple of years ago, I was interviewed by Dave Simpson for an article he was writing for The Guardian newspaper, which involved his tracking down all former members of The Fall. Now, I have never been in The Fall, but Simpson’s definition of “being a member” involved all those who have played live with the group, which I certainly have done, when Mark E. Smith passed me a guitar during the encore at one of the legendary “Granny On Bongos” gigs at the Reading Alleycat in April 1998. I’ve recounted the story with monotonous regularity over the years as it has far more credibility than admitting to having sung backing vocals for Sarah Brightman, which, to my shame, I have also done.

Simpson has compiled material from all of those interviews into a book, The Fallen, prudently launching it at a time when MES is surrounded by something of a media circus again. I haven’t read it or even bought a copy yet, although my suspicion is that it’ll make far better reading than the bar-room babbling of MES’s autobiography. However, I was somewhat perturbed by this review of the book in The Guardian which claims that the aforementioned incident took place in 1989 in Leicester, at which point I would have been just 14 years old. Even more amusing is the fact that the “information” is in quotation marks, so either the reviewer is incapable of quoting a text properly, or Simpson is incapable of reading information freely available on the once-official Fall website.

Priceless. To quote the Hip Priest himself, “Check the record, check the record…”