Good Pop, Bad Pop

AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK. What if the things we keep hidden say more about us than those we put on display. We all have a random collection of the things that made us - photos, tickets, clothes, souvenirs, stuffed in a box, packed in a suitcase, crammed into a drawer. When Jarvis Cocker starts clearing out his loft, he finds a jumble of objects that catalogue his story and ask him some awkward questions: Who do you think you are. Are clothes important. Why are there so many pairs of broken glasses up here. From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley's Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book. , this is the hard evidence of Jarvis's unique life, Pulp, 20th century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he'd rather forget. And this accumulated debris of a lifetime reveals his creative process - writing and musicianship, performance and ambition, style and stagecraft. This is not a life story. It's a loft story.