Summer reading | 15 August 2007

Any Coffehousers still hunting for a holiday read should pick up a copy of Alex James’s Bit of a Blur, which is keeping me company in Andalucía. For those who care, this is the second indispensable account of Nineties culture to appear (the first being John Harris’s The Last Party). For everyone else, this is simply a riveting, witty and beautifully written account of a remarkable life, lived to the full and beyond. From his beginnings on the school bus in Bournemouth, via his student days at Goldsmiths (where he met a promising young artist called Damien Hirst), to the heights of global stardom as the bass player in Blur, James recalls every minute with relish, while pulling off the rare trick of laughing at its absurdity, too. His ego was a force of nature, as were his appetites, yet he combines this with a wry sense of human folly, especially his own. This makes him not only a terrific observer but also a compellingly candid illuminator of his own interior life and the rollercoaster ride of the mind that was his youth. Already a well established Independent columnist, James here marks his debut as a terrific author. Truly excellent.