J.G. Ballard was a man of the Right — not that the Right really wanted him

‘I believe in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen on her lower lip; in the melancholy of wounded Argentine conscripts; in the haunted smiles of filling station personnel, in my dream of Margaret Thatcher caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel, watched by a tubercular filling station attendant.’

The drug-addled, leather-faced rock star from Detroit, Iggy Pop — né James Newell Osterberg — whose contribution to the canon of modern popular verse includes ‘Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, once wrote and performed a song called ‘I’m a Conservative’. Most of the lyrics to this number are incoherent psychotic drivel, but there was a certain force to the title refrain, repeated over and over again in a characteristically vehement and snarling manner. The music press thoroughly enjoyed this chunk of satire from one of rock’s most nihilistic and extreme performers, until Iggy — a mite confused — put them right.