Right, Marvellous Liz – she of the quite remarkable organisational skillz and highly readable blog – has been doing this five questions thing – see her site for more on it. Anyway, I agreed to have 5Qs thrown at me (I think I need to do the same for five other bloggers reading this, so if you are, feel free to email me, and we’ll make it happen – you then answer them on your blog – sort of new millenial chain letter thingie i guess…)

so, here’s Liz’s Qs for me, answers below…
And five for the lovely Steve L:

1. Where did you get that coat from (and are you sure no animals were harmed in the making thereof)?
2. Is blogging all about narcissism and if so what makes you think it’s of the benign variety?
3. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, seems to have the basics covered, but there’s always space for one more – go for your life!
4. Appearance wise you are clearly the bastard love child of Geddy Lee (the hair, the facial fluff) and David Beckham (the nail varnish, the sarongs), but to whom do you owe credit for your emotional, political and intellectual pedigrees?
5. You can select a super-human power for the day – choose well my friend, choose well!

Answers –

1. Long black furry coat was from the late-lamented C&A (£50), short blue furry coat was from some crappy shop on the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street (£25), and other short greyish furry one was bought in Zurich whilst on tour with Howard Jones!
2. Blogging can either be about sharing information from across the net, or randomly inflicting the minutae of your life onto others. Mine’s a mix of both, with very little of the former and far to much of the latter. I think it’s a highly narcisistic persuit, but the benign-ness stems from the lack of harm that comes from it, I guess… I suppose you could use a blog to bitch about everyone in your life that you have a grudge against, then the benignity of it would be blighted!
3. Human Rights – it’d have to be trade laws – make it a basic human right that the collection of humans in a particular nation have the right to fair and just treatment in international trade, and that the rich humans in other nations be obliged to keep the playing fields level.
4. Two people, mainly – my mum, who’s a marvellous woman, probably mad, very clever, and who is basically a middle aged woman version of me (and the difference would be??) the other is The Small Person – I remember a bloke I once knew who made this insane defence of marrying thick people by saying ‘you can have fun with your friends and argue with your wife, or argue with your friends and have fun with your wife’ – that’s flawed on every conceiveable level, and I very much like having someone around who’s my intellectual superior, and challenges my rather too black-and-white thinking on a regular basis (I’m sure my Edward VIII faux-pas wouldn’t have happened yesterday if she’d been at home. And I certainly would never have had a journalistic career without her intervention!). So, heavy female influence on my life, to be sure.
5. A super-power? I think I’d have to go with super-speed-reading-and-information-retention – I’d use that day to fill my head with all the things I really ought to be aware of if only I managed my time better and read more books – hows that for a topical answer on world book day?

Thanks Liz, very interesting questions! :o)

Now, time to get ready for tonight’s gig, I need to pick Theo up in less than an hour.

Soundtrack – John Coltrane, ‘Live At Birdland’.