Who’s who in world of ghostwriters?

IN 2007 I was working with Mark E Smith, lead singer-songwriter of The Fall, on his autobiography Renegade. One afternoon he rang me up, asking if I could take his typewriter down to ‘our new office’ above a pub in Salford, England.

A ten-minute in and out job, it was the last I saw of ‘our new office’, but not the pub downstairs; pub days were essential to the writing of the book. The typewriter, however, remained untouched by Smith’s fingers: neither word nor letter ever tattooed the page in that quiet run-down room above The Kings Arms.

We wanted the book to be a twisted, sarky comedy with an experimental edge, and Smith was adamant it shouldn’t be ‘too long’.