From the PR: “For more than a decade, Derek Philpott and his son, Dave, have been writing deliberately deranged letters to pop stars from the 1960s to the 90s to take issue with the lyrics of some of their best-known songs. They miss the point as often as they hit it.

But then, to their great surprise, the pop stars started writing back…

Dear Mr Pop Star contains 100 of Derek and Dave’s greatest hits, including correspondence with Katrina and the Waves, Tears for Fears, Squeeze, The Housemartins, Suzi Quatro, Devo, Deep Purple, Nik Kershaw, T’Pau, Human League, Eurythmics, Wang Chung, EMF, Mott the Hoople, Heaven 17, Jesus Jones, Johnny Hates Jazz, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Chesney Hawkes and many, many more.”

Derek Philpott – and his son Dave – have clearly got too much time on their hands. Let’s face it: who hasn’t listened to a song with a questionable lyric or message and wanted to ask, say, just how much of Summer of ’69 was feasible given that Mr Adams would only have been 9 years old at the time. But it’s not like any of us have actually taken the time to take any pop stars to task on the matter.

Well, Derek and Dave Philpott have taken the time to do so. Obviously not all of them have responded but many did.

In amongst the sarcastic “thank you for your observation” openers – like Carol Decker’s “I recently found your letter. It had got lost in the substantial
fan mail I still receive along with requests for my underwear” –  there are some exceedingly funny and genuinely interesting responses from the artists ‘Mr Philpott’ writes too. Take the fact the response from Mott the Hoople’s Verden Allen as an example in which he responds to the request to “clarify how, oh, man, you may question the need for TV when you got T.Rex.” – its nothing to do with Marc Bolan.

Of course, it’s not just the letters back from the musicians that make for great reading but – questions surrounding the lyrics and songs aside – the letters from Messrs Philpott are bloody funny too with many an obscure and surreal story causing a good coffee splutter. And, in that way, Dear Mr Pop Star makes for an ideal coffee table book for anyone who loves either a good laugh or music and especially both.

My thanks to the authors – whoever they may really be – for taking the time out from questioning Del Amitri to ask me to read their book, I thoroughly enjoyed it.