Before they went the way of the coal miner, music journalists were a definable demographic and music journalism an actual occupation. The good ones boasted cachet and influence; the best could inspire a generation. Tom Hibbert was perhaps the music journalist nonpareil for at least a dozen years between the early 1980s and 90s, an idiosyncratic stylist whose work graced the pages of Smash Hits and Q, where he repeatedly refused to kowtow to celebrities, irrespective of their status.
Phew, Eh Readers? – whose title alone gives those new to him a flavour of the arched eyebrow manner in which he wrote – is a collection of his finest and funniest writing, alongside fond recollections from those who knew him best: his wife, musician friends, fellow writers.
