The daring curiosity of Blondie’s Debbie Harry

My admiration for Deborah Harry goes back a long way and — fittingly for a woman who even as a septuagenarian has an air of juvenile delinquency about her — got me into trouble as a teenage writer on the music press. Sent to review the hot new American group Talking Heads, who were in London for the first time, I raved instead about the unknown support band, Blondie, in effect ending up: ‘And then these really boring preppies came on and spoilt everything.’ I was subsequently sent to review Gilbert O’Sullivan in Croydon as punishment.

I normally skip the start of showbiz memoirs (childhood is so common), but I was hooked from the moment Harry — in the dreamy yet deft tone reminiscent of Blondie’s best lyrics — starts recalling her origins as the illegitimate Angela Trimble, soon to be adopted by the Harry family and renamed Deborah. Her destiny as an international lust object is evident early on; when she’s just a baby, a doctor tells her mother: ‘Watch out for that one — she has bedroom eyes!’ From the age of eight, she is pestered by perverts: ‘Because of their frequency, over time, these incidents felt almost normal.