Against all odds, I’ve started to like Phil Collins

This isn’t easy for me. In fact, it is perhaps the most difficult public admission I’ve ever made. I’m worried about how people will react, how friends and colleagues might reconsider their opinion of me after reading this.

But I can’t keep it locked up secretly inside me any longer. I have to admit it.

I’m starting to quite like Phil Collins.

This isn’t a fully fledged commitment – it’s not something I’d die on a hill for. But I’m unmistakably starting to warm to the chirpy, balding balladeer.

This is particularly shocking because for at least a decade, from the early eighties to early nineties, he was, for me, the personification of everything that was wrong with the world. Phil Collins was worse than bankers with Porsches, than Black Wednesday, than jackets with padded shoulders; worse, even, than Brothers in Arms.

In fact, my antipathy to Phil is so long-established that it even predates the time when I was first aware of who he was.