It turns out Wreckless isn’t his real name, which is a bit disappointing, but on the other hand his mother really did tell him that “there’s only one girl in the world for you, and she probably lives in Tahiti”, thus gifting him the immortal first line if Whole Wide World, his one big UK hit. For a short while, that single made Eric Goulden the shiniest star at Stiff Records – home to Ian Dury, Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe – the label that created New Wave, the art school wing of the punk movement.
   The Sussex-bred Goulden decided he wanted to be a pop star “swinging on the garden gate one summer morning when I was nine,” and he has been one since 1977, even though for much of that time he hasn’t actually earned his living as one. This is a large part of what makes both his music and this book so interesting. Day job reminiscences are often the prime parts of a star’s autobiography; luckily for us, Eric has spent most of his life doing day jobs – before, after, and even during his brief period of fame.
   After recording Whole Wide World for instance, he signed on with the Manpower agency which got him an office job destroying confidential personel files. Naturally, Wrecks spent his time reading the files out loud, accompanied by future Bad Manners member Steve Smith on harmonica. At the Corona fizz factory he took to autographing the lemonade labels with “Cordially yours, the Quality Control Inspector.” From schooldays onwards, Eric has always done his best to “let the side down magnificently.”
   Throughout it all – and despite a seemingly insurmountable lack of competence – he pursued music, heroically, like a Jack Russell trying to mount a Spacehoppa. “I’d always wanted to do it so that’s what I was going to do. I figured that if I played enough I’d get better.” Funny thing is, he was right. Initially a reluctant singer he has a crackly, moaning voice which ought to be embarrassingly bad; but in fact, married to his unfiltered yet poetic lyrics, is chanson-like in its ability to pierce the heart. His vision was a music that crossed The Monkees with the Velvets, but with a British accent and “a sarcastic touch of easy listening.”
   “When people talk about ‘well-crafted songs’ it makes me cringe,” writes Eric. But the fact remains that Big Smash, which I’ve been playing pretty well non-stop for more than twenty years, is the most beautiful double album ever recorded. I defy you (or, indeed, him) to name a better-crafted nostalgia number than Reconnez Cherie. No pop song has a more arresting opening than Whole Wide World, and almost everyone I know wants The Final Taxi played at their funeral.
   Those of us who have long considered him a Living God must therefore answer the obvious question: if he’s so good why has the whole wide world scarcely noticed him over the last quarter century? Of course, the category-obsessed conservatism of the record industry tends to work to the disadvantage of unusual talents. As Eric says, he helped “to create this thing called ‘Indie’ – if I’d known then what it was going to become maybe I wouldn’t have bothered.” Alcoholism and bad luck have played a part. But this honest, and indeed undiplomatic, book suggests that Wreckless must take a good share of the blame for his inconsistant career.
   He claims not to hate anyone, but by his own admission is pretty good at loathing and despising. The list of folk he’s fallen out with ranges from his own bowel-obsessed granny (who he finally shook off by vomiting over her Pac-a-Mac), to just about everybody he’s ever encountered in the music business. He’s still fuming at some indecipherably tiny slight (from Elvis Costello). “He was almost unpleasantly ambitious,” Eric writes of the speccy maestro: “He looked very pleased with himself and so did his spectacles.”
   Wreckless Eric’s book, like his records, reveals him to be the heir to the great British creative tradition of cheerful misery. Wreck-and-roll is music to stay alive to: Eric Goulden is to my mind the best songwriter of his generation, and he's written the most entertaining pop memoir I’ve ever read. The book ends eighteen years ago, with Eric sober and living as a family man, albeit on a forged mortgage, and having released a record called The Len Bright Combo Present The Len Bright Combo By The Len Bright Combo. I can only fervently hope that someday there’ll be a second volume.

MAT COWARD