Michael Odell first noticed there was something dysfunctional about the world’s best rock stars when The Clash’s Joe Strummer threw a salt cellar across a café in a rage while being interviewed by him. Michael has cherry-picked the most extreme moments of  dysfunction (his and theirs) of a career in rock writing for his non-fiction debut, Rock Bottom, which was published by Icon in 2017.

He has written for the Voice, NME, The Face, Esquire, Spin, the Guardian and the Independent. He has been a columnist on family life for the Daily Telegraph and writes for the Times. While working as a Contributing editor at Q magazine he was nominated PPA writer of the year twice, but never won.

‘I think victory would have damaged my artistry,’ he said. ‘My best work arises from pain and disappointment and so I’d like to thank the panel for not choosing me.’

Michael is also the author of The Festival Book (Doubleday, 2017), his unique guide to UK music festivals as well as So You Think You Are British? (Transworld, 2017), a challenging and thought-provoking post-Brexit quiz book. Taking the government’s current UK citizenship test as a starting point So You Think You Are British? reveals how much you really know about the country in which you live.