They parked in front of a snooker hall behind Camden Road station, a few streets away from Billy Ryan’s office. Thorne was hugely relieved to escape from Tughan’s car, deciding that although his own taste in music had perhaps irritated a few people in its time, he wouldn’t wish Phil Collins on his worst enemy. The man was perhaps second only to Sting in smugness and his capacity to make you pray for hearing loss. As they walked towards Ryan’s place, Thorne couldn’t help wondering if gangland enforcers ever considered using a Phil Collins album as an alternative to pulling people’s teeth out and drilling through their kneecaps…
THE BURNING GIRL (2004)
While Tom Thorne is fanatical about country music, he is equally passionate when it comes to dismissing the music he is…less fond of. This has got me into a little trouble with those unable to separate the character from the author, particularly fans of Phil Collins, who took umbrage at Thorne’s less than favourable attitude to their hero. This was then whipped up by a particularly lazy and mendacious journalist into a “war of words” between myself and the former Genesis frontman, quoting from an interview I had never given and attributing to me comments which I had never made. For the record, I think Phil Collins is…a very good drummer. Anything else was made up by newspapers, and anything said about him, or Sting, or Dido or anyone else featured on the “Now That’s What I Call Chicken In A Basket” compilations, by anyone in the books is, if such a thing were possible, even more fictitious.
Let’s leave it at that…
