Convinced that any refusal to smile was going to land me in deep trouble, the anxiety became overwhelming.

Broken Greek by Pete Paphides | Waterstones Broken Greek by Pete Paphides | Waterstones

I am of a different generation, but can relate to taping songs off the radio and using gates as football goals.

Maybe enough time has passed for me to really gun for that little guy, in all his naivety and goodwill, who turns up to the cabaret nightspot thinking: “This is going to be the night. Years later I learned that Miss Zimnovodski would usually put the two class gerbils in her pocket and bring them with her too, often letting them out for a run in the pub. With its forensic attention to detail and exquisite unpacking of the pre-teen mind, Broken Greek is an intensely personal hymn that sings a universal theme.

Broken Greek by Pete Paphides review: a warm, heartbreaking

Within a year, that argument had resulted in a song with which both Nina Simone and The Animals enjoyed huge success ( in 1986, Elvis Costello recorded a nice version too). The man singing Nina Simone’s To Be Young, Gifted and Black on a covers compilation album is in fact a pre-fame, very much not black Elton John. Their final album – featuring compositions by big hitters such as Jimmy Webb and Cook and Greenaway – didn’t even get a release here, although its exquisitely-arranged title track provided them with one final UK hit. Ostensibly, Broken Greek begins with the young, timorous Takis (our protagonist, who only later will decide to become Pete) going through a prolonged mute phase.As, of course, is the young Pete’s immersion in pop music, back when BBC1’s weekly chart countdown Top Of The Pops was the fulcrum of many families’ viewing week and who you liked took on truly tribal significance. The book offers plenty of side dishes and B-sides: British class and racial history; the popularity of Blue Riband biscuits, a Proustian madeleine for anyone who grew up in the 70s and 80s; the arrival of Pot Noodles, Channel 4 and VHS.

Broken Greek - Incredible books from Quercus Books Broken Greek - Incredible books from Quercus Books

Composer Horace Ott came up with the melody and chorus lyric of Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood in 1964 after falling out with his wife-to-be Gloria Caldwell. By the final section of the film, when we see Coco Hernandez – who, lest we forget, is played by Cara in the film – weeping in the squalid apartment of the "auteur" who asks her to take her top off, we finally see what that risk amounts to. Each play of an album by the Wombles “added to the distance between Cyprus and England”; he hears in its grooves “wet parks in October, empty playgrounds through rain-flecked classroom windows”.It promotes a kind of tolerance, because you would watch Top Of The Pops and you would be exposed to things that you weren’t going to like, but at least you got a working understanding of what the other tribes were into. Not just Ansells bitter and Embassy cigarettes but scotch and Hamlet cigars, with Babycham or Britvic for the ladies.

Pete Paphides General 1 — Pete Paphides

It’s an act of career suicide… When I was writing it I was thinking, “Am I really about to say that “Save All Your Kisses For Me” meant as much to me as “ Starman” did? Then again, it’s hard to think of something original to say about The Beatles and I didn’t have to worry about someone else writing about The Barron Knights or Brotherhood Of Man. BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 07: A fan eats fish and chips outside the stadium before the Barclays Premier League match between Aston Villa and Chelsea at Villa Park on February 7, 2015 in Birmingham, England. The grown-up Paphides’s career is also invaluable when it comes to the inside track: as a youngster, he is convinced that the soul-baring The Winner Takes It All must have been written while Björn Ulvæus was drunk, because, as Paphides wonderfully puts it, “spillage on this scale almost never happens without the aid of a corkscrew”.By then young Pete is so in love with pop music that he’d lift his parents’ telephone receiver most days and add 2p to the bill by listening to British Telecom’s “Dial-a-Disc” service. There are several great songs on Russian Roulette – including the hugely collectable DJ fave Draggin’ My Heels – but Wiggle That Wotsit edges it because that’s obviously the one Jarvis Cocker would be most likely to cover. I experienced the same feeling reading this book as I do when listening to his show on Soho Radio – you are in the happy, rewarding presence of an irrepressible enthusiast. Clutched in my sweaty palm was the handle of a carrier bag containing assorted Barron Knights albums and singles.