Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands

Frank [and] ever-hilarious . . . Carruthers’ anecdotal extravagance borders on the Ustinovian . . . That Carruthers has emerged alive, with self-deprecation, warmth and humour intact, is little short of miraculous.

As well as a being a fine comic writer, Carruthers is a social historian, documenting a strange chapter of the British counter-culture, where poverty and impossible freedoms lived alongside each other.

A compulsively readable book . . . It offers a rare and very funny view from the outer edges of life as a musician, where debt and insecurity appear even more perilous than the drugs.

A ruinously frank and funny account of the emergence of both Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized from the sonically celestial squalor of Rugby.

Dear prospective space travellers and dwellers in the margins, should you flame out possessing only a fraction of Mr Carruthers’ melancholic wit and good grace then everything will have been worth it.