YesItsReallyMe wrote:I thought with most of his 80s stuff he was taking the piss (which I liked), he seemed to go a bit "serious" after that so I sorta lost interest ... if that makes any sense.
It reminds me of my old schoolfriend whose uncle is Michael Palin. She used to say he was "really boring", like she expected him to sit around the dinner table making jokes about the gravy!
I'm not going to speculate here about JGT because that's not fair on him, but I can tell you about me. I'm
very extravert - practically the opposite to him - but I would hate to be famous, even on an indie level. I've done a few interviews for the game mods I've made, and I hate it - I fret endlessly about "coming across wrong", and get really neurotic afterwards, even if that's not naturally my way. I used to be in a couple of bands, and even though I'm a pretty confident public speaker, I could never go on the stage without a drink or two, and would often drink while conducting interviews as a journalist.
I can also tell you that my reputation preceded me a little bit. I used to get
very drunk on occasion, and it's something I'm a little embarrassed about. I often wonder if I'd have got further or been given better assignments if I'd have been sober more often, though my regrets are few and minor.
I can tell you that the minute I stopped writing for magazines, I lost about 80% of my "friends", and that is an aspect in which the pendulum swung back the other way with me. When you burn your hand, you don't just move it out of the path of the flame but pull it right back. In my case, it was being too open with people, trusting too much, so I actually became quite shy for a year or so and I certainly think twice before e.g. adding people to Facebook. I think very, very carefully about whether people really like me and consciously avoid being able to "offer" anyone anything beyond what I am as a person, just so I can never be used again.
One thing I still find myself doing is playing up a bit when I'm not comfortable with the situation. I mean, it's not any kind of fake persona, but even in RL when I meet someone they normally meet the class clown side of me, rather than the quiet and reflective person I am the rest of the time. It's very easy to worry that people will like you less if they see another side to you, and even though I'm very open and gregarious, I have a paralysing fear of rejection.
So I guess this self-indulgent waffle is really to say that if I was him, I'd probably be acting much the same way. I really liked the "character"/Clint Ruin/whoever, perhaps because I could sense that he was "a bit of a sweetie" (as one journo put it) underneath the sleazy clown act. If all that was out of some fear that I/we wouldn't really like him if we knew what he was really like, then of course the only reaction I
can have is to embrace the real person, whatever I find there.
Plus the new album kinda rocks.
