How would you spend your last day on Earth? GARY KEMP wants Bowie to get arty…
Where would you like to wake up?
At home in the Cotswolds, with my wife and children.
What would there be left for you to achieve on your last day?
There’s always a lyric to finish. They hang around, and I think it would be awful to go without tidying those up.
Who do you have at your final dinner?
It would be nice to have Bowie, my greatest inspiration as a youth, and he would be in Thin White Duke mode. What I’d like him to actually is cut up the menu to rearrange it into abstract servings, as he used to do with lyrics. Brian Eno would create the ambience, and Philip Larkin would write a maudlin poem about it all. I think at some point in the evening Oscar Wilde would pop by and spout a few epithets.
What is the after-dinner entertainment?
I couldn’t go without finishing that day’s Guardian cryptic crossword. Then I’d go for a bike ride with Lance Armstrong, because I’m obsessed with road cycling. And then finally I think we’d all climb Scafell Pike in the Lake District, which is a place that I adore. And then pudding wine served on the top with biscotti and a sunset.
What would be your biggest regret?
I didn’t appreciate thick hair when I had it. I used to think it was awful and curly and didn’t know what to do with it. Now I just wish I had it!
How would you like to die?
As long as he doesn’t get done for murder – it would all be arranged before – but Pete Townshend would smash his [Gibson] SG into my heart. Can you imagine just lying there as he lifts his guitar, and this guitar and this artist have three seconds to live?
What are your final words?
They would have to be in honour of Bowie, and it would be: ‘Wham bam, thank you mam’, from that song ‘Suffragette City’.
What would you have written on your gravestone?
This has got a double meaning: ‘Sorry I’m late’.
Who would you like to meet you at the pearly gates of Heaven?
I’d like to see Robert Sandall, who I think was the greatest music journalist ever. He used to write for The Sunday Times. He’s a friend who recently passed away. He was also a wine writer, so he’d have a nice glass of red for me. And he’d be with Natalie Wood, who’d be desperate to meet me.
Describe your vision of Heaven.
It would be on Earth, because I’m an atheist. It would be with my wife and children healthy in their life and no-one on the planet suffering abuse anywhere.
If you could be resurrected the next day, what would you come back as and why?
It would be as a religious leader, because then I would have discovered that there is no such thing as an afterlife and I would resign from my job and stop pontificating immediately.
Gary Kemp’s autobiography I Know This Much and Spandau Ballet Live At The O2 DVD are out now.
