The Word

The December issue of The Word features a 6 pages long interview with Noddy. The interview is quite good with several nice pics, but the interviewer Mark Ellen is a bit too star struck for my taste. I mean, it's okay that he's in awe about interviewing Noddy, but does he have to be it on the expense of the other guys from Slade?
You get a whiff of it already in his description of the original band on stage. Don is said to hunch over his kit "like one of the vultures from The Jungle Book." Jim is dismissed as the pretty-boy of the band and Dave is said to be "apparently only four foot high" and have an "ape-like grinning countenance" and a haircut done by "someone with a grudge against him".
From here on Jim is depicted as some sort of helpless kid whom the others had to take care of and his huge contribution to the band is hardly mentioned.
Dave and Don really get the knife, when Ellen claims that they "are still dragging themselves round Europe". In my opinion they don't exactly "drag" themselves. Actually their popularity in Europe is quite amazing considering that Nod and Jim are no longer in the band.
Nod ends the interview by dismissing any plans of a reunion: "I don't think there'll ever be a reunion. I don't miss it."
The interview as such is - despite all - rather good, but I wish that someone else had conducted it.