I'm still trying to work out how, this week, I came to be transfixed by a podcast on the subject of tumours. There are, I'm sure, cheerier ways to pass a weekend, such as shaking the crumbs out of the toaster or tying down one's dustbins in preparation for the not-quite storm of the century.
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It’s a rite that has sustained the arts since time immemorial: the delirious hyping of bright new stars as they first emerge, only for them to be flayed alive for daring to reach the top.
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“It’s time the tale were told,” sang Morrissey on The Smiths’ “Reel Around The Fountain”, and almost 30 years later he has finally done it in a mammoth memoir that, on account of appearing as a Penguin Classic, has caused a commotion well before publication. Few could really be surprised; this is typical Morrissey hubris, similar to the time that he insisted his solo records go out on EMI’s HMV imprint, which then dealt exclusively in classical music.
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There is a school of thought that says rock is a young person’s game, that when a musician reaches a certain age, their choice of career ceases to be either interesting or dignified. Nick Cave, along with his peerless supporting cast of Bad Seeds, blows such notions sky-high.
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In the early years of rock'n'roll, any young British musician hoping to make their mark on the world relied on radio to get them to the top. And when I say radio, of course I mean the BBC. Because, whether you were accustomed to playing to one man and his dog in a suburban boozer, or packing them in at the 100 Club, it was there that the "arbiters of musical propriety", as Pete Paphides called them in Radio 4's Auditioning for Auntie, got the final word as to whether your music would be heard by the masses.
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"This must be the first time in the 65-year history of Reith," said Sue Lawley, introducing the Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry, "that a cross-dresser has been the lecturer."
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"I used to call her names, swear at her," recalled "Stuart", as he had consented to be called, about his relationship with his girlfriend. "I've hit her... and given her a black eye... I've punched her in the face a few times and kicked her in the legs." This was just one of the recollections of a man who had spent years terrorising his partner in The Abuser's Tale, a study of domestic abuse on BBC Five Live's Victoria Derbyshire.
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Trying to explain the concept of irony can get you into hot water. When I recently told my six-year-old that it meant saying one thing and meaning the opposite, she replied, quite reasonably, "But why not say the thing you mean?"
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