Who’s still flying the flag for Britpop?

There’s only one Cincinnatus in the Cotswolds, and it’s not Boris Johnson. Over the Rainbow tells the story of how, once again, Alex James was torn from his life in a very big house in the country to fulfil his national duty to play bass with Blur. The tale comes in the form of a diary, like Brian Eno’s wonderful A Year with Swollen Appendices, except that this is a year with inflated egos. To make sure our sympathies are in the right place, it begins with a preamble at the end of December 2022, during which the author attends a series of parties, each more wearisomely smug than the last.

Then he sets up the stakes of the plot. James – who has just turned 54 when the book begins – is responsible for the running of a farm and food business where, at the end of August 2023, he will be organising and hosting his annual food and music festival, Feastival. He has also agreed to rejoin his former bandmates to record a new album and play two concerts at Wembley Stadium in July – a commitment that has grown into a run of festival dates almost every summer weekend across Europe and South America – although he and they have not played together for nearly ten years or even spoken in two. His children yawn at his records. One of his fields is full of human sewage. Worst of all, he has grown so large that his trousers – his ‘Britpop trousers’ – don’t remotely fit.