Chrissie Hynde writes like an angel on angel dust

‘The day I found out that Suzi Quatro wasn’t a dyke was the worst day of my life!’ a teenage Joan Jett once complained to a teenage me — and, substituting Chrissie H for Suzi Q, I knew well how she felt. Here I am popping up on page 150:

Little teenagers out in the sticks like Julie Burchill lapped up my half-baked philosophical drivel and prepared their own versions of nonsensical tirades for the day when they too could make a ‘career’ out of it. I even sold the darling little Julie my typewriter for £15 when my time was over, like passing the baton of ‘how to fuck off the nation and get paid for it’. She insisted on giving me £17.

I did, however, draw the line at learning the bass guitar, as she suggested, and being recruited into one of the half-baked bands she was always banging on about forming, especially when I learnt that my stage name was to be Kicks Tart — if I’d gone along with her, I might well be dead now rather than enjoying a robust old age.