despite my mate reminding me several times through the day. Get the feeling that there is a renewed sense of warmth towards morrissey at the moment, almost as if we realise he is that rare breed, someone who has something of interest to say, and that if we are not careful, will vanish.

I guess in this age of sanitised pop stars, prompted by media savvy students on work experience at the record companies, little of any interest/controversy gets said anymore.Was listening to an interview with Chris Martin the other week, and I was cringing with how dreary it was.

Morrissey and his music I can for the most part live without. But Pop stars like Morrissey I certainly can't, and hope I never do.

And yes Stuart is good.

but as someone who also runs a magazine that relies on the celebrity interview, I know your pain.

Sometimes I think it's time to give it all up. It's not what it was.

Doesn't Morrissey look like Gordon Brown now.

about his writing. I'm currently loving his 'Pies and Prejudice' - the title alone was worth the price of admission. And I absolutely agree with the previous poster that we need character and 'Characters' in music.

maconie v morrissey? wigan v whalley range? no contest. morrissey's strategy has always to been to deflect any reasonable criticism of his music or his politics by retreating into his carefully engineered enigmatic prima donna posture - how very DARE you! you a mere HACK!

[Mod edit: passage removed on advice of Word's ad-hoc legal department] most journalists approach him with a mixture of awe and fear thereby avoiding anything that might upset The Big Man.

He's a one trick pony and that joke really isn't funny anymore.

bored of Morrissey now? Like his plodding music, his schtick hasn't evolved in any way over the last 20 years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hc2c0

in case you can't find it.

i work for the bbc so apologies for this outrageous plugging and in office hours too.

Mark Ellen wants his eyebrows back!

They are just singers, not politicians. If you want to give a singer a hard time in an interview it seems to be more about your ego and wanting to kid yourself that you are doing "real" journalism. What exactly are they "guilty" of? Making music that's not to your taste?

Also, if you do want to challenge the singer/musician, do it face to face. Don't hide behind the fact that you can run away and write it down later.

Was never into The Smiths myself, perhaps apart from one or two of their jauntier singles, but in the early 90s I lived with a chap who was very keen on everything Moz, and thus I was exposed quite regularly to the solo Morrissey repertoire. I quite liked some of it, but since then, he does seem to have made the same record over and over. And over. Still, why mess with a formula eh.

BTW this reminds me of a story I was told some years back by an acquaintance who worked for a record company in the late '80s and met the great man professionally on several occasions, and was invited ON A DATE with him - and went - apparently it was a "very odd" affair. I can't repeat any gory details, but now there's a reality show in the making. Never mind "Paris Hilton's New Best Friend", here's "A Date With Morrissey". We just know you're gonna love it.

I heard the first half hour but missed the interview.

The thing I noticed from the 5 or 6 songs I heard was that it wasn't a great gig. The band are so unsubtle and seem to take something away from each song rather than adding anything to it. I feel he would be better served on stage with some string arrangements perhaps. Perhaps he prefers the large comfort zone he's been inhabiting for some time now.

And he is somewhat of a grumpy old man now. His between song banter wasn't directed at the audience but rather at outside forces - one moan was at Mojo and Q - I can't think the audience care particularly.

Shame if he gave Stuart Maconie a hard time. In Cider With Roadies he relates wonderfully on encounters with Morrissey.

to know what would have happened to young Stephen had the Smiths not taken off. Where would he be now I wonder? An un-famed Morrissey, like an un-famed Lennon or Bowie, is somehow unimaginable in the 'real' world of mortgages, Sainsbury's and job interviews.

I also was glad to see that he's still got some great song-titles. However his band are too 'plod' for me now, though I don't see why he shouldn't carry on doing what he loves doing. After all, he has possibly been one of the greatest frontmen ever and certainly been one of rock's foremost lyricists.
He's not been afraid to help and champion a fair few acts in his time either, from The Las to The Libertines.

... posted a very fine example of a broadcast interview with a prima donna "artist" type earlier on.

Both print and broadcast interviews have their advantages and disadvantages. Folks in broadcasting tend to be quite suspicious when magazine writers editorialize and stick far too much opinion in their pieces just as folks in magazines are rightfully suspicious when a presenter's fear of dead air prevents critical probing. Sometimes it is comparing apples with oranges.

I will say that I suspect that within Radio 2 the onus is on getting the guest to be entertaining first and that critical journalistic rigor comes second (at least in the case of the live shows as opposed to the documentaries). The production teams there probably have had that drilled into their heads from day one.

I didn't think Stuart Maconie did a very good job at all. He fell into the traps that Morrissey always lays which is based on him knowing that the interviewer is in awe of him. Blow, Smoke and Tailpipe is all we really got.

I was surprised that Morrissey allowed it to be Maconie actually, given - if I remember rightly - he was a significant contributor to NME-Madstock-Mozgate 1992.

Listening to the totally charmless Morrissey last evening, I was reminded that post Marr, he's The Smiths without the tunes.

to be fair. His cds are meaningless and his ego is bigger than his talent. He acts like some washed up Noel Coward in LALA land where the vacuous populace fawn over him. Sorry mate but you have no relevance on these shores now - your star has waned so take your sulky schoolboy antics elsewhere.

I haven't heard this recent Stuart Maconie interview. However, I did hear him in conversation with Russell Brand last year(which may still be available on BBC Radio podcasts). The pattern sounds similar, with questions being deflected by Morrissey, goading him witheringly with "is that really the best you can do?" - type responses and, yes, turning the tables on the interviewer.

Morrissey does it very well though, and much of it came across as quite amusing. Russell Brand rose to the bait time and time again. After a while it sounded like a cool sixth former talking down to his adoring, over-keen 12-year-old brother.

It seems to me that Morrissey prefers to talk about abstract things, and hates talking about himself (for whatever reason). Under the cloak of trivia talk (childhood TV shows, old pop stars, Carry On films etc)- some interesting nuggets may reveal themselves.

In Stuart Maconie's book "Cider With Roadies", he makes no secret of his Moz-worship and the narrative of the whole book seems to lead up to the time when he finally gets to spend some time with Morrissey. By the way, this makes me think that Stuart Maconie would not have been part of any NME campaign against Morrissey. If I remember it correctly, it was Steven Wells.

but being a pop star, he's a bit of a tall pygmy in that respect, I guess. Last time I heard him interviewed he shared the penetrating insight that "all American teleision is rubbish". Do you want to tell him or shall I?

In fact, fuck that, I *know* they are... and I'm thoroughly convinced that mine is the only valid opinion on the subject of whether The Smiths are or are not completely fantastic.

However...

Barring one or two singles around the time of 'Viva Hate' I've found Morrissey's post-The Smiths output to be hugely underwhelming. I could write for a week on why I feel like this, but really, what's the point? Nobody cares about him anymore. Not for any genuine reason, anyway. He still has the press snared in his coy little web of ambiguities and knowing winks. Others buy into the mythology and iconography.... the nostalgia. But none of this is *real* ( Ok, maybe I'm being harsh; some will genuinely like what he's doing now... I just can't see why).

Every interview with him, print or TV, is pregnant with the unspoken subtext of Johnny Marr: whether referred to obliquely, directly or not at all, the Morrissey / Marr dynamic is there, and I'm always left with the impression of Moz as some be-quiffed Miss Haversham, mooning around in perpetuity. Just so sad.

I would hope personal opinion is safe ground, but the fact is that even as I write this, essentially a comment on a forum, I wonder whether somebody at The Word will be forced to censor. And *that* just nails it for me, the very fact that I'm even vaguely concerned about such a thing: I want to think of my heroes as artists. I used to think of Moz in that way. Now I don't.

And I'm curious: we know he got on with The Word, but can anybody tell me whether he followed up on his threats to NME around the same time?

While not being a huge Smiths or Morrisey fan anyway, it may be no surprise that I found him to be so holier-than-thou it was embarrasing... Banging on about how he was proud never to have accepted an award. He was, I felt, being controversial for the sake of controversy.

I think Stuart and Mark are brilliant. They really are a great team and a joy to listen to.

....it was recorded on Monday.

So there were no pressures of live radio and it was probably edited.

The key thing to understand about Morrissey is that he's a FAN, he remembers what it was like to be a fan of an artist, the things he liked about his favourites, and that feeling when you were disappointed in them too... all this quite aside from the music they made of course!

So whenever Morrissey's being interviewed, you can just imagine him thinking to himself, "What would Morrissey say now?" and he limits himself accordingly, which manifests itself as evasiveness, jokiness and obtuseness (and reinforcing his image of course), albeit often cloaked in sardonic humour. On the plus side, he's retained an air of mystery rare in today's music biz (do we really know any more about him than we did 25 years ago?), but more negatively his interviews can be frustratingly glib and lacking in, er, meat.

I'm definitely on the National Treasure side of the fence, but just wish he'd let his guard down occasionally... just have to wait for the autobiography I suppose.