XTC in the Press: 1992
The Big Takeover
Issue No. 32, 1992
A Conversation in Two Acts — Act One
Andy: Well, comparisons with the Kinks are immodest of me, because I don't think that we've written anything of the purity of Ray Davies... he has been such a big influence on me... My song writing comes out how it does, a lot of it because of Ray Davies, I think.
[Thanks to Tony Beyer]
Melody Maker
December 12, 1992
No such ignominy for XTC who, unlike Ultravox, appear to be alive for their 1980 performance. Endearing as it is to hear them trying to forego their psychedelic tendencies in deference to the New Wave movement of the time, that's also XTC's downfall. If they'd been performing live for long enough to reproduce the more convoluted twists of their '82-'83 rural psychedelia for a captive audience, then a souvenir of that would be invaluable. All the same, it would take a total bastard to turn their nose up at the whole of the Hammersmith Palais howling the chorus to “Respectable Street”, the insane military ska of “Generals And Majors” and a savagely percussive reading of “Making Plans For Nigel”. Three touching, if not essential moments that leave one with a slightly greater understanding of why a steady 30,000 adoring fans have devoured their new material ever since.
Peter Paphides
[Thanks to Marcus Deininger and Pär Nilsson]
Guitares et Claviers
May 1992
Quick Translation ! Don't worry about grammar or vocabulary :)
GC: "Nonsuch", this tenth album, is a bit of a birthday, in'it ?
AP: To tell the truth, we haven't counted, then the candles...
GC: It's been now ten years since you have stopped to play on stage. Don't you miss it a little bit ?
CM: Yes, sometimes I do. I would have liked to play our music live much more, to feel better on a stage.
AP: On stage, I hated my hands. I always had the feeling to play like a beginner I was so nervous.
GC: And you can do without keeping in touch with your fans ?
AP: There were no real contact with them. It often was only "Thank You !", followed by "Yeeeaaahhhh!". I much more wanted to talk to the audience than to play guitar in front of it. I never really knew how to express myself on stage.
CM: The ideal thing would be to be able to play only the concerts we would like to do, after having choosed how many people could enter and after having felt the atmosphere, but you just can't do it ! But, we nevertheless have contacts with our fans, especially in the USA, when we meet them in the decication sessions in the music stores. But it's true it is not the same thing I felt some pleasure when, during an intro, I discovered a smile on the lips of a fan, happy that we played a song he knew and he liked.
GC: Will we see you one day on stage again ?
AP: Maybe. For the moment, we have only done radio shows in the USA. It has nothing to do with a rock'n'roll show, but is far more natural.
GC: Why did it take three years between "O & L" and "Nonsuch" ?
CM: We had a lot of problems. First with our record company : our musical director did not like the songs we had written. He asked us to write some others, because he was convinced we could do better. Until the day he left the label, just when we had in mind to break the contract. Hopefully, his substitute did like them. Then, we had a lot of problems to find a producer. Hugh Padgham and Steve Lillywhite, whom we had worked at the beginning with, had in mind to produce the album. But finally, Lillywhite had no time for it. We contacted John Paul Jones, but he was too expensive. Then, Bill Bottrell, the engineer of Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" was ready to come in our homes with his studio. But the deal did not work. Then Gus Dudgeon produced it.
GC: Why didn't you produce it yourself ?
AP: Virgin didn't think we were able to. And, on a more practical point of view, it is terribly hard to have a really critical view when you produce yourself. You can't play and listen at the same time.
CM: We need somebody to correctly use our energy and our creation.
GC: Do you work in the same way for fifteen years ?
AP: Yes, quite the same. Each one writes in his home and then shows the songs to the others and we build.
GC: Andy, some defines you as something between Walt Disney and Benito Mussolini Are you a knid a dictator ?
AP: Let's say I am a kind dictator. I have very precise ideas upon what I want to do. And when things don't happen the wrong way, I don't like that.
GC: You have written some songs on keyboards, though you don't know how to play them. Why ?
AP: Piano is an instrument which is exciting to explore. It is a brand new territory. I know guitar too much. With piano, you don't know what is going to come out of your songs, especially because I only play it with two or three fingers.
GC: One has the impression that on "Nonsuch", the Beatles shadow is much more present than before. How do you explain it ?
AP: I find afterthoughts that "O&L" was more influenced by the Beatles. But you may be right. The Beatles always had an influence on us. They have done so much with two guitars, a bass and drums that he is very hard not to follow the paths they created.
GC: As they do, you seem to have always pay much more attention to the song and the melody than to the music itself.
AP: Yet, it is rather the drums which I have taken first into account : I always wanted to write with the drums rather than with the voice. Colin worried about the melodic aspect a long time before I did.
GC: Can we expect a new Dukes Of Stratosphear album ?
AP: No. They are dead. It was a joke we had invented and loved. But it fitted in a very determinate period. It has been done. It was good. Now, it is over. What we would like to do now, in contrary, is to release an entirely instrumental album, to appear as something else than singers.
GC: What do you like in the music nowadays ?
AP: I have liked a lot the Cocteau Twins, and more recently, the LA's album. They have the potential to become excellent.
GC: Yet, they do not like their own album.
AP: Well, you know, there are just poor little bastards (laughs).
GC: And what do you think of people like Costello, Cure, Police or Joe Jackson who began almost in the same time than XTC ?
AP: Costello is good. But he should pay attention not to look like Jerry Garcia (ha! ha! ha!). Joe Jackson is a mystery. He keeps on changing his musical style, and then you are lost with him. But he writes a lot of good stuff. Police could have come near the Beatles. They did excellent things but also awful ones like Canary In A Coalmine. And about Cure, well sorry, it is not exactly our cup of tea (he imitates Robert Smith, crying)(laughs). The best things in Cure, are Tim Pope's clips.
GC: What would like XTC to leave to the English music history ?
AP: What we have done. That in a century, these pretentious bands like U2, Simple Minds or Cure will be forgotten, and that XTC will be reminded, surely more simple and not pretentious at all.
[Transcribed by and thanks to Emmanuel Marin]
Chicago Tribune
Monday, June 22, 1992
TEMPO
XTC WINS FANS DESPITE ITS RECLUSIVE STAR
XTC's Andy Partridge has a few qualms about the music industry. He hates videos, claims the band's last priority is to entertain, and-because of his stage fright-has refused to tour for 10 years.
Despite those obvious roadblocks to success, XTC has managed to gain listeners - slowly. It has been 15 years since the band started out as a three- piece new wave-rock outfit, but it wasn't until 1989 that the band finally hit in the U.S. with its pure pop single "The Mayor of Simpleton," from Oranges and Lemons.
If Partridge is trying to keep XTC's light under a basket, however, it isn't quite working. According to Geffen Records, the band's sales have been rising ever since the band quit the road a decade ago. Its new Geffen album, Nonsuch, debuted at No. 97 on The Billboard 200-the highest debut yet for an XTC album-and the first single, "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead," has hit No. 1 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Meanwhile, Partridge continues trying to blend into the scenery of everyday life.
"I feel too private an individual to stand up and say, 'Here I am!' " Partridge says. "I'm really not interested in any of that adoration stuff."
[Thanks to David Crosby]
OOR
Number 12, June 13, 1992
by Oene Kummer
Andy Partridge is a dealer in XTC but lying on a sofa in the Amsterdam Americain Hotel the self-proclaimed speaker for the Disappointed has more of an ironic, thirty-eight year old university professor that explains to his audience how the wonderful world of pop music works. He starts to talk before the cassette recorder is on and doesn't stop afterwards.
'Our new album -- our tenth if I'm not mistaken - we have called, modest as we are, Nonsuch. Which is old English for unsurpassable. Not to be beat. We have to wait if that is really true, but every record must in principle be the last and best XTC album. In my opinion we have become, since English Settlement in 1982, the year we stopped to play live, a little better every time, although we have taken a long time to grow mature. The careers of most bands are over after fifteen months, while we have taken fifteen years to get going. I have the urge to excuse us for that. We have no rights for a career as long as that! Ask our friends of the English press, for whom you are old news after five minutes and that have never forgiven us that we kept going on. It's all gotten a bit out of hand and thanks for that. I don't want what I wanted earlier: to become rich and famous and screw the whole world. One half figurative and the other half literal. Don't look at me so surprised, because that's what everyone wants that has the mentality of a member of a teenage gang. Also the somewhat stuffy, silly Andy Partridge that you see before you. It's the classic sex, drugs & rock & roll story. That's why you start a band.
'But next you do all those things and you find out it's nothing at all. It's empty and superficial. In 1982 the teenage gang member in me died that wanted to be a Monkee-Beatle-Rolling Stone and out of the ashes there rose a baby that wanted to be the best songwriter in the world. He is now 10 years old and he's doing nice, but I have the feeling as if I'm still only just begun. I have to get rid of all that sixties shit in our music. And then the fifties. And the seventies. Everything that comes out now, has gone in as a child. People ask: why are you a retro band? Why do you sound like The Beatles and The Beach Boys? However I for myself think that we sound more like The Kinks mixed with Steely Dan. But those are the sticks we use to build our huts. And it would be healthy if other bands would lie a little less about their influences, because I hear everybody in everybody.
'But I have good ears, because I also hear things in us that other people don't hear: Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Sun Ra, John Coltrane. The tension between experimental jazz and the will to exorcise the Small Faces, Kinks, Beatles, between that lies the music of XTC. A song like Miniature Sun from Oranges and Lemons has chord changes from the jazz fusion and a text that could be from The Beach Boys.
'Originality doesn't exist according to me. Listen to the Beatles and you hear big pieces of Little Richard and Chuck Berry. Listen to their arrangements and you hear George Martin. He is called the fifth Beatle, but for me he was the first. A genius. The Beatles could write good songs, but they needed his arrangements to make them alive. If you hear demos they made before they started to work with him. So bad. No wonder they were rejected by so many labels.
'What is a miracle is that we haven't been dumped by our record company Virgin after all those years. Our last two albums, Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons have sold respectively 250.000 and 350.000 copies in America, but still it has taken a lot of time before Nonsuch was a fact. The record was in the end produced by Gus Dudgeon with on drums Dave Mattacks, formerly from Fairport Convention. It is a pity that The Disappointed has been released as the first single. For me it's not more than a nice biscuit with the tea, but it was our first top 40 hit since ages ago in England, so for that it has done it's work.
'About the next single, The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead, I'm more satisfied. It's about people that want to do too many good things with their lives and therefore are cleared out of the way, like John Lennon or JFK, although I haven't written the song with them in mind. Apart from that there are two songs very important for me. Books Are Burning is about freedom of speech, a sacred thing, and has been written because of the riots about The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. And Rook, for myself the most mysterious song I ever wrote, is about the accepting of human mortality. Furthermore, Colin Moulding, our bass player, has surpassed all his previous compositions with Bungalow. It has a brilliant simplicity that I envy. Together with guitar player Dave Gregory we are now more than ever a today's version of The Brotherhood Of Man. Taking into account that The Brotherhood Of Man was much more rock & roll than XTC has ever been.
'The chances that XTC will ever tour again are still very small. The pure physical fear that I feel when I'm confronted with a big audience is the main reason. We did do acoustic sessions in America at the time of Oranges and Lemons and that went reasonably well. I am afraid that the program MTV Unplugged was caused by us. At MTV they wanted us to do an electrical show on their soundstage, but we wanted something with three acoustic guitars. They used us as a try-out and they liked it so much that now the make it an obligation for everybody to play acoustic.
'With Nonsuch we also wanted to do acoustic sessions in Europe, but in France they had arranged appearances that would draw a few thousand people. I got paralyzed by fear, so I thought, shit, it's not worth it and pulled the plug from it. If it's a few people, it's okay, but when it gets too crowded, when the crowd begins to scream when I get on stage, I close up. Very different from sitting here on the couch. Pardon me, but from all the Perrier that I drank this afternoon, I have to leave terrible farts. That sums it up quite good. Andy Partridge. From the front there comes out wind. And from the back also!'
[Transcribed by and thanks to André de Koning]
Chicago Tribune
Sunday, May 3, 1992
ARTS
Rock
by Greg Kot
THE XTC LEGACY: AN APPRAISAL
XTC emerged as a quirky new wave band on the pithy White Music (1977, ***). Go 2 (1978, ** 1/2) continues in the same adrenalized, adenoidal vein without the peaks of its predecessor: "Radios in Motion," "This is Pop" and especially "Statues of Liberty."
Drums and Wires (1979, *** 1/2) is among the more accomplished records of its time-edgy, brisk and sarcastic, with pop gems such as "Making Plans for Nigel" and "Life Begins at the Hop." Black Sea (1980, ****) marks the end of an era with an exclamation point. From here on out, the band's writing would become even more complex and personalized.
The double-album length English Settlement (1982, ***) delves into more elaborate arrangements, broader social issues and longer songs with mixed results. One of the problems, as with most subsequent XTC records, is that it's overstuffed, with 15 songs instead of, say, the best 10.
Waxworks (1984, ****) recaps the band's best early work. Mummer (1983, ** 1/2)combines lilting love songs with clumsy social commentaries. The Big Express (1984, ** 1/2) is XTC at its most cynical and grating.
Skylarking (1986, ****) is lush and beguiling, drawing the listener into its world before exiting on a note of death and nihilism. The kaleidescopic Oranges and Lemons (1989, *** 1/2) is nearly as good, opening with the aptly titled "Garden of Earthly Delights," but undercuts itself with some mid-album dross.
Rag and Bone Buffet (1991, **) is a collection of leftovers, some of which should have stayed in the vaults.
Nonsuch (1992, *** 1/2) contains a few soft spots - "The Smartest Monkey" is another social commentary that falls flat and "Then She Appeared" finds the band repeating itself - but the vast majority of the 17 songs are dazzlers, a mix of Broadway pomp, McCartneyesque sing-song, lilting melodies, delightful odes to everyday pleasures and humbling introspection. Though the first single is the estimable "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead," the should-be hit is Partridge's "Dear Madam Barnum."
Ratings:
Excellent ****
Good ***
Fair **
Poor *
[Thanks to David Crosby]
Select
1992
p. 11
XTC with Andy Partridge
(right) and (inset) as “art punks” in '79.
(Peter Noble/SIN)XTC are so English that it's almost impossible to imagine them drinking Coke or wearing Nikes. And, true to form, their new album, ‘Nonsuch’, thanks Henry VIII and has the odd clunk of venison being thrown over shoulders on the rhythm tracks. Andy Partridge, it seems, has been diving into record shops for the 17th century's equivalent of the Top Ten.
“It really lifts me and I can't explain why,” the singer/guitarist ponders. “It's like suddenly discovering the colour orange.”
Song of the songs sound like they could come from a Paul McCartney album. Partridge feigns horror. “Paul McCartney?! He's like... who's that woman from Bedknobs And Broomsticks? Angela Lansbury.”
Despite the japes, you can't take the '60s — or indeed Ye Olde Englishe Pop — out of XTC. The Americans love it. “I'm sure they see us as three Robert Morleys,” quips Partridge.
“‘Oranges And Lemons’ did half a million in America, which cleared a huge chunk off our debt, thank you very much, and although that many records is suicide for Michael Jackson it was great for us.”
‘Nonsuch’ has songs about rooks and bungalows, and each one is true to the Partridge pop philosophy. “I don't like dead wood in a song, it's important to cut the flab away. In a perfect world, all the songs I write would be singles.”
Partridge admits he still doesn't know the names of the chords in some of his songs. And when composing tracks for ‘Nonsuch’ at the piano, he kept his hands frozen on the keys while he slapped stickers on to remind himself which fingers were going where. But being a “keyboards neanderthal” (his words) actually helped his creative abilities for ‘Nonsuch’. An old pumpkin stuck on Partridge's garden fence led to a political ballad (“It's not about JFK”) and watching his daughter Holly on her rocking horse led to the blissful “Holly Up On Poppy”.
Like their 1977 contemporary Elvis Costello, XTC escaped the curse of new wave by deliberately mining ancient pop history. These days, it's hard to guess that they ever jumped up and down in skinny ties at all. “Art punks!” says Partridge in disgust, shaking his head.
[Thanks to Graeme Wong See]
Kronto Reviews
1 Apr - 30 Apr
Kronto Singles Review
by Leo Breebaart
All opinions expressed are humbly mine. The rating system is simple:
**** = "Excellent", by the time you read this I will already have begged, stolen or borrowed the album this song is on. *** = "Above Average", if this song comes on the radio, I turn the volume up, and I will certainly try to get a hold of the album. ** = "Ok", this song is quite literally 'average', in the positive sense of the word. * = "Below Average", if this song comes on the radio, I turn the volume down, and pray for it to finish quickly. (0) = "Worthless", songs that I can't understand *anyone* would like. XTC - Peter Pumpkinhead (**)
A strange choice for a single since there are many other songs on XTC's new album that have imho far more commercial appeal. This song is also one of those tunes that sounds much better within the context of the album than on its own as a single.
All remarks, agreements, disagreements, additions, or factual error corrections welcome.
[Thanks to Leo Breebaart]
BBC Radio 1
Saturday 25 April
BBC Radio 1 broadcast an interview with Andy Partridge on Saturday 25 April. Here is a tidied up transcript (without the ums and ahs) reproduced without permission. The interviewer was "Whispering" Bob Harris.
[ plays Peter Pumpkinhead ]
BH: Peter Pumpkinhead: another one of the characters that have peppered XTC lyrics over the years, and the man responsible for so many of those songs, Andy Partridge, is with me in the studio.
AP: [in German accent] Nein, Nein, I was only following orders. Ah, give me that harp boy. I was just thinking, I'm going to have to blow some more harmonica on these songs.
BH: Yeah, it sounds really, really good that track.
AP: I enjoyed having a grunt away through the old harmonica.
PP: Tell us about him then, Peter Pumpkinhead, who is he?
AP: My goodness. The few people that have heard this track so far all think it's about somebody different, which is kind of mischieviously intentional.
BH: Cos I've heard it's about Lennon...
AP: Ah well, that's interesting. Well, there's another name for the hat then. People have said. "Ooh, it's Jesus, isn't it?", "Ooh, it's Kennedy, isn't it, this song?", "This is a song about Lennon, isn't it Andy?". An interviewer said, "It's a song about the Pope, right?", cos the pumpkinhead is like the hat thing he wears. "It's Joan of Arc, isn't it Andy. You've changed the sex". It's about all those people, and none of them. He's a kind of a general, all-purpose, hero figure that is too good for his own good. And, as with all good hero figures, the government have him bumped off. Which is very sinister, and kind of run-of-the-mill for people who get too big.
BH: Cos this is going to be the next single, isn't it, the follow-up to "The Disappointed"?
AP: That's right. We hope to abrasively rub this like sandpaper into the ears of the British public.
BH: Were you disappointed that the last single didn't do better? It peaked at number 32, which isn't bad, but seemed again somehow to me to characterize XTC; just sort of edging into the charts, but never actually, with the one exception of the big album in 1982, English Settlement, really getting big top ten singles and big top ten albums. Have you been disappointed over the years?
AP: Only a tiny bit. A little disappointed that the British public didn't run out in their droves and buy it, as opposed to some of the other things that are in the charts. Then again, we must be regarded as Martians I think by the British public generally.
BH: Some of the experiments you have experimented with over the years with XTC have been very expansive, haven't they. The band has presumably soaked up a fair amount of record company money without ever yielding a massive profit.
AP: That's an interesting way of putting it... bit of a sponger that Partridge. Well, I heard a couple of weeks back that we only have quarter of a million debt left to pay Virgin. It's very hard to pay a quarter of a million debt on 5p in the pound royalties. Let me see, how many centuries does that make it before we get in the black?
BH: You're still around doing your albums. This one, again, has got so many different facets to it.
AP: We're still around doing the records because it gets a bit like a disease. You start in the pop world, and you have a - well I certainly did, 15 years ago - I had a totally different mentality to what I have now. A totally different body, I may add. It was just the rock and roll gang mentality which a lot of bands start out with, and some bands aren't allowed to drop. Nobody's going to let the Rolling Stones be the bank managers that they are now - they're going to see them as this crumbly old rock and roll gang thing. But we started with a rock and roll gang mentality - we wanted to drink the world dry, and mate with the rest of it; and you do that, and then you start thinking, hang on, this isn't as enjoyable as the music stuff. And it takes a long time to come round to realising that the best thing is the music. And you get really selfish, and you just... I want to be the world's best songwriter. I'm not interested in any of this rock god nonsense. Not for me.
BH: Let's have another track from the album, and this is one that Andy has picked to play himself. It's called Books are Burning.
[plays Books are Burning - conversation starts again as track fades]
BH: That's Books are Burning.
AP: Yes, the band sinking gracefully in the West as they fade there. [sea dog or pirate voice] Gracefully into the West me darlin's.
BH: Burning books always represents to me the most profound demonstration of censorship. Is that the theme of the song?
AP: Yes, it's a surrogate murder. I think the idea behind book burning is, well, first of all you burn the books, and then you burn the author, and then I think we'll burn all the people that read it, and, wait a minute, I think we'll burn their neighbours as well, and all the neighbours' relatives until there's nobody left that disagrees with us. It's the tip of the iceberg of a lot of frightened regimes with totalitarian leanings unfortunately.
BH: Was the Salman Rushdie situation also relevant?
AP: That was partly inspirational in writing this. Literally in the space of a couple of weeks I saw a shocking news report about this death thing for Salman Rushdie, but equally shocking to me was the visions of his books being burned in London. Here we are in mediaeval England with books still being burned. And literally in the same space of a couple of weeks I heard that in America the Christian Right.. [German accent] Das Christian Reich ... are destroying C S Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia" because [TV evangelist voice] it provokes demon worship, let me tell you children. Oh goodness, America's become Iran hasn't it? Iran with slightly more hamburger stands. I love books - they should be human sanctuary. You should be allowed to write anything, any opinion that you like, in a book - good, bad, ugly - anything you want. And I think it should be a sanctuary area; a sanctuary for human communication.
BH: Tell us about the making of the album itself, because I know you've got a sort of basic home studio, haven't you?
AP: Basic is not the word. Yes I have a little cylinder recorder there. [makes noise like static - then sings] Oh, I want to be loved by you.
BH: With the elastic bands and all that?
AP: That's right, yeah. Get the little Jap to peddle faster - Come on, I want 78 rpm out of you! [Japanese accent] Oh, ok.
BH: Did you do any of the work for this at home?
AP: It was all written at home in the little shed at the bottom of the garden where I take myself off with copious coffee and lock myself away from the world, and don't dare take a phone down there - that's just suicide, you know?
BH: Cos Dave Mattacks is the drummer on the album, isn't he?
AP: Yes, he's thumping those tubs.
BH: It's amazing at the moment because virtually everything from Great Britain either has Simon Phillips on drums or Dave Mattacks on drums. In America it's Jeff Puccara (sp?) seems to be on absolutely everything.
AP: While we were rehearsing this stuff in Colin's living room with copious tea, and doilies on the little table you know, sat around strumming - oh, what was that chord there? Oh, hang on, you can't do that; I'll hold that with my foot if you want to get the right shape - we're saying what drummer, as a fantasy, would we really like to work with. And then three or four names came up - it was "Oh yeah, how about [mumble, mumble]?" And like the top of the pile, the top fantasy drummer, would be Dave Mattacks for us. And literally the same week somebody went to a Fairport Convention gig - cos Dave's regular thing is the Fairports - and they brought back a programme, and it had an interview with Dave Mattacks saying, of all the people you've drummed with; you know, Paul McCartney, Brian Eno, and I'm not going to mention a few of the others - ok, Max Bygraves - I mean, he's on half of your record collection out there; you probably don't know it, but that's him drumming. Of all the people you've drummed with Dave, who would you really like to drum with that you've never been asked. And he said Joni Mitchell or XTC. So I just had to get on the phone to him straight away - donning my long blonde wig and fake teeth. But he saw through the disguise immediately, and I said it's not Joni, it's Andy. So for him we were a dream gig, and for us he was a dream drummer, so it was a great piece of happenstance.
BH: Good luck with the album. It's great to see you back at Radio 1, and back with such a terrific LP.
AP: Cheers m'dears.
BH: We'll hear a final track from it now. Andy Partridge, thank you very much indeed
AP: Ok, thanks alot.
[ Plays Dear Madam Barnum - a track which I found very reminiscent of the Hollies' "Carrie Anne"! ]
[Transcribed by and thanks to David Snowden]
Daily Mirror
04/21/92
ANDY PARTRIDGE is £10,000 poorer after mice ATE his prized collection of comics.
Andy, singer with XTC, returned home from a Stateside visit to find the pests had munched their way through more than 800 rare 1930's comics. Moans the brokenhearted star, at No 36 with Disappointed: “I've spent 15 years collecting them.” Some were worth more than £1,500 each. “I've now invested in a cat.”
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