It’s no use pretending that this book will be of interest to every Literary Review reader, so let's get rid of the riffraff: Shots From the Hip is a collection of the pop journalist Charles Shaar Murray's interviews and record reviews between 1971, when he was writing for Oz, and 1990, when he was writing for the Daily Telegraph – a long, strange trip indeed, and anyone who wants to read any significance into the termini would probably be right to do so.

It is a book that means a lot to me personally. During the early-to-mid Seventies, when I was a teenage schoolboy at a suburban grammar school, I trusted Murray in a way that I have never trusted a critic since. On the cash I earned from my evening job I