Since I doubt if anyone gives much of a toss and almost no one will see this it seems like a suitable place to vent somewhat about my involvement with the popular pop singer James Blunt - he's a folky balladeer who's shifted a couple of million records in the UK and is set to be the next big thing in the world (this year at least...) according to Tom Sturges, the screaming cover of Billboard and just about everyone who knows about these things. I think if I stick to the facts then nobody could accuse me of doing anything other than that.

I was introduced to James late in 2001 by a friend of mine, Dixie Chassay, who was his girlfriend at the time. She told me he was a singer and I should check him out. We met and he sang a couple of bits for me with his guitar and we hung out. His stuff was crude, occasionally laughably direct, and betrayed his relative lack of musicianship or discernible influence - it sounds unlikely but I think he genuinely hadn't even heard of some people like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell let alone taken any of their music on board (a fact about which he was at least open and affable). But I kind of loved the guy. He was great looking in a short-arsed Tom Cruise-y kind of way and he had this girlish singing style that brilliantly offset his back story - he was an actual serving Captain in the Queen