Madhouse Family Reviews: Book review : Dear Mr Pop Star

Monday 15 October 2018

Book review : Dear Mr Pop Star - Derek & Dave Philpott

"Dear Mr Pop Star,

Just heard you on the radio ... have a few issues ..."

And so begins a series of deliberately deranged letters to a very impressive number of big name pop stars from the last few decades. The father and son team of Mr Philpotts are incessant in their hilarious interpretations of various well-known classics - so well-known in fact that you usually just take the words for granted when you listen to them, without even thinking about them any more.

Derek and Dave manage to delve deep into the words that were the musical backdrop of our better years and show us that ... well, in fact, they're rather a lot of tripe ! For more than a decade, they have been writing to pop stars from the 1960s to the 90s to take issue with the lyrics of some of their best-known songs. But then, to their great surprise, the pop stars started writing back... !

Dear Mr Pop Star contains one hundred of Derek and Dave's greatest hits, including correspondence with Katrina and the Waves, Tears for Fears, Squeeze, The Housemartins, Suzi Quatro, Devo, Deep Purple, Nik Kershaw, T'Pau, Human League, Eurythmics, Wang Chung, EMF, Mott the Hoople, Heaven 17, Jesus Jones, Johnny Hates Jazz, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Chesney Hawkes and many, many more. That sounds like the playlist of some of the better nights of my uni days !

Many of the songwriters play the father and son at their own game, replying to the letters in great depth, with often hilarious results. It's the perfect book for dipping into whenever you've got a few moments and need a break from 'real life'. If you're wondering what to get your daughter's new boyfriend for Christmas or what to put in the works Secret Santa this year, you could do a lot worse !

star rating : 4/5

RRP : £16.99 (currently £11.72 on amazon)