crackerjack
Well-known member
Julie Burchill, writing about and liking Patti Smith at the NME sometime in the '70s, but really desperate to go home to listen to Tony Blackburn playing the Isley Brothers and Odyssey and dancing around her room to the music she really loved, then feeding this back surreptitiously into her articles.
Isn't that just a bit of creative revisionism from Burchill - I'm sure she was a massive Patti Smith fan, her response to the Hip Young Gunslingers ad was an appreciation of her. I don't think liking both was that incompatible, even then.
The most controversial thing that happens these days is that you ask a star the wrong question, they get in a mood, you apologise and cringe, and then write it up as if you had some amazing confrontation, which you didn't. You just pissed off some famous wanker who was probably in a bad mood anyway, and then shat yourself in case your editor got annoyed because you ruined any prospect of future exclusives or access. Then wrote it up to make yourself look as reasonable and safe as possible, to save any skin left (or worth) saving.
Or things like this happen.