Amanda Palmer is taking a chainsaw to those preconceptions

Hype about Amanda Palmer’s early crowd-funding prowess has somewhat overshadowed the fact that she’s made some great music, writes Ed Power

SINGER Amanda Palmer has an unusual memory of Ireland. “Neil Gaiman and I actually lost our virginity to one another in Dublin,” she says. “I was on a world tour. He was famous Neil Gaiman. He told me that if we were going to date, we’d have to fly to each other. So I said ‘OK, I’ll come to your film premiere in Dublin’.”

I remember her visit. She and Gaiman performed together in a Dublin bookshop — he read, she strummed a guitar and sang. She laughs. “Yes, though I can confirm we didn’t have sex in the bookstore.”