Mr. Cool – a young mixed-race man, born in London, who lives in the same building as the narrator and who is threatened by the local teddy boys to leave the area. Cash Box Top 100 Singles – Week ending May 10, 1986". Cash Box. Archived from the original on 30 October 2019 . Retrieved 22 May 2021.

Julien Temple shot the music video, which echoed the 1950s style of the movie. The video was a homage to an old British advert for Strand cigarettes. The ill-fated advertising tagline "You're never alone with a Strand" is quoted by Partners in the film. The video also uses footage from the film. It may be that Dido's slipping, or the paper's slipping, or just that everything these days is falling in the fat laps of the jingle kings." The narrator's parents – His mother runs a boarding house and prefers the company of her boarders to that of her second husband, the narrator's father. She has a stormy relationship with the narrator, who keeps a photographic darkroom at the house as an excuse to visit his father. His father has been writing a book called The History of Pimlico for several years. Compared by critics with JD Salinger's classic Catcher in the Rye, Absolute Beginnners is an attempt to create a sort of literary British James Dean - an antihero with no apparent demands on his time and no worry where the next ten bob is coming from as he rebounds across Notting Hill, with a keen sense of style but little sense of agency, from encounter to encounter with hustlers and pimps, fellow teenagers and a girl he takes pornographic pictures of. As he despairs of Britain after the riots, it is only the arrival of a group of 'grinning and chattering' West Indians that persuades him to stay - 'I flung my arms around the first of them, who was a stout old number with a beard' - promising them 'We're all going to... have a ball!.' Allen, Jeremy (3 December 2014). "David Bowie: 10 of the best". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 8 March 2017 . Retrieved 4 June 2016.In July has the narrator taking photographs by the river Thames, seeing the musical operetta H.M.S. Pinafore with his father, has a violent encounter with Ed the Ted and watches Hoplite's appearance on Call-Me-Cobber's TV show. The novel is divided into four sections. Each details a particular day in the four months that spanned the summer of 1958. Bowie performed the song live during his 1987 Glass Spider Tour (released on Glass Spider (1988/2007)), a 25 June 2000 performance of the song at the Glastonbury Festival was released in 2018 on Glastonbury 2000, and another live version recorded at BBC Radio Theatre, London, two days later was released on the bonus disc accompanying the first release of Bowie at the Beeb in 2000. The song was performed live on several occasions on the 2002 Heathen Tour as a duet with bassist Gail Ann Dorsey; usually the song would end with Bowie and Dorsey dancing. Mark Plati would play bass while she sang.

Absolute Beginners is a novel by Colin MacInnes, written and set in 1958 London, England. It was published in 1959. The novel is the second of MacInnes' London Trilogy, coming after City of Spades (1958) and before Mr. Love and Justice (1960). These novels are each self-contained, with no shared characters.European Hot 100 Singles – Hot 100 of the Year 1986" (PDF). Music & Media. Vol.3, no.51/52. 27 December 1986. p.28. OCLC 29800226– via World Radio History. The Fabulous Hoplite – An occasional rentboy and part of the Knightsbridge-Chelsea set, who lives in the same building as the narrator. The narrator (Blitz Baby)– a teenage photographer who lives in an attic flat in a building in London's W10 area; he makes most of his money by selling pornographic pictures, but is interested in having an exhibition of his other work. The name "Blitz Baby" was given to him by his mother, since he was born in a bunker during a blitz bombing.