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issue 1 june 2004

while it is a rare thing to be able to gauge someone’s true personality after only a few hours of their company, anderson does at least display the requisite celebrity persona. in order for people to want you, buy your records, chase you across crowded railway stations and throw flowers at you on stage, you must have charm and magnetism. so far he appears to have both in spades. in the flesh he is far a more masculine than he looks on stage or in pictures, yet the accoutrements are all there: black crew-neck sweater, black flared jeans, black socks, black clumpy shoes. black! the colour of angst. he sports two earrings (one very large, one tiny) and a blonde streak crawls from his trademark curtain of lank hair. he might sometimes talk like a stroppy undergraduate – hasty, tart, optimistic – but he looks like the consummate neurotic boy outsider, an impression exacerbated by the asthma inhaler on which he sucks repeatedly throughout our interview.