‘After its success, I drank free champagne, met Paul McCartney – and used our record company’s phones to call my aunts in America and Canada’
The song came before Fairground Attraction formed. I was living in a damp bedsit in Cricklewood, London. I had a girlfriend but it wasn’t going anywhere. One morning I sat in the kitchen and wrote the words: “I don’t want half-hearted love affairs / I need someone who really cares.” I soon had the first two verses and maybe even the title, Perfect. But it was a different song, more downbeat and reggae-ish. I just left it there in a book.