I’ve never been a massive Jagger fan. There was a historic moment a couple of years ago when I turned down not one, but two, separately offered tickets to some enormous Stones jamboree. People were cross but I just don’t get his appeal at all. I didn’t like him when he was young and wearing frocks and ‘breaking taboos’, and I don’t like him any better now he’s old and getting girls in their twenties pregnant. I was once even at a party where he turned up, complete with entourage (at the Independent during its brief, cool, Rosie Boycott phase). He was very short, but sure enough went home with a girl young enough to be his carer. I’m a bit wary of slagging off a pop icon these days, as they are dropping like flies, but I do think the video below says all you need to know about Mick Jagger. David Bowie is effortlessly cool, while Mick Jagger jogs around like a big girl’s blouse wearing, erm, a big girl’s blouse. Bowie even gives him a ‘who is this idiot?’ look at one point.
So why the tirade? Because blimmin Mick Jagger turned up in my dream last night, didn’t he? First on a coach – Mick Jagger, on a coach, and I’m not sure what I was doing on a coach either! – and then on a plane. Places you can’t easily run screaming from (unless you have an ejector seat). Nothing too awful happened, he just followed me around like the dork at school you want to avoid, making inappropriate suggestions. Luckily I woke up before I had to hit him. I thought of Wendy Cope making cocoa for Kingsley Amis, a similarly odd conjunction of characters, but then she was quite happy about the unsolicited nocturnal encounter and even got a poem and a book title out of it. I don’t suppose I’ll have any such luck with Mick Jagger. Just a night of dodging him and avoiding the aeroplane loos. Honestly, some people.