Bournemouth to Mars

Consider this metaphor for rock 'n' roll excess: there was a time, shortly after the release of the single ‘Song 2’ marked the height of Blur’s global popularity, that the band’s former bassist Alex James would tell to cabbies asking him what he did: “I’m trying to get to Mars.”

“It was the only way to get them to shut up,” James says; the punchline is, however, that he was telling the truth. In 2003, the former rocker was standing alongside the telegenic westcountry director of the Beagle 5 programme, Colin Pillinger, as the ill-fated probe failed to contact mission control.

James’ life, as recounted in his newly-released autobiography, Bit of a Blur, is littered with similar stories encapsulating the freedom of popstars to do whatever it is that they care to. One million pounds spent on champagne; waking up with five groupies on his 29th birthday; flying a private plane underneath radar ten feet above the Moroccan desert. What possibly could have made him want to give it all up?

“I swooned for my wife,” admits James languidly, still possessing the good looks of his youth as the girth of middle age begins to stretch the front of his shirt. He describes the “de-clutter” after the dizzy hights of superstardom in unbelievably casual terms: “I just woke up on a farm, with this woman I was married to who I didn’t really know, without a job, and thought... ‘What now?’”
Now a cheesemaker and columnist by trade, writing about country life, James still has a good deal to say about his former industry. Talking about the type of music he grew up with, he describes a heydey for the medium when for most people culture was music. CDs cost £13.99 and sold millions of copies, “only Heat magazine and the like sell millions now,” he remarks.

Ably probed by the event’s compère, James Jauncey, James occasionally squirms, especially when confronted with his past infidelity and drug abuse. But it is only because of his book that the questions can even be asked, and Bit of a Blur promises to be a remarkably candid portrait of the man and his times.

And what of a reunion? “Probably, but then someone will nearly call one of the others a twat in the papers...” Judging by James’ incredible tales, it’ll happen – he’s clearly enjoyed himself too much to pass it up.