Ashes to ashes ...

It’s bizarre that the passing of someone that you’ve never met can have a monumental effect on you.

But when music is your main abiding passion in life, which you take to an obsessional level like I do, and the one artist you adore more than any of the others dies, it’s bound to have an impact. And man, it has.

I came into work completely stunned and as the office Bowie freak was asked to write a tribute for the FFP website.

It was the last thing I wanted to do (but if I’m being honest I’d have been annoyed if someone else had) and I can’t really remember what I wrote. I was still numb.

Since then I’ve spent hours online looking at the incredible tributes that have been paid all across the world.

The impromptu celebration in Brixton, church bells ringing out ‘Space Oddity’, a 500-strong choir singing the same song, the cathedral organist playing ‘Life On Mars’, to the less grandiose, but every bit as touching, such as someone building an Aladdin Sane snowman (!).

Over the course of the week more details of Bowie’s 18 month illness came out and it made for painful reading. For example the videos for ‘Blackstar’ and ‘Lazarus’ were shot when he knew he was probably going to die and are going to be difficult to watch again. It’s just all too sad.

So here’s what’s going to happen; Iggy Pop is to immediately be concealed in bubble wrap, carried wherever he needs to go to and is in no way, shape or form allowed to use sharp objects or touch anything electrical.

I can’t take much more.