"They Were Never Interested In Fifteen Minutes Of Fame"

I picked this line by the age old art of closing my eyes and sticking a pin in the direction of the donkey.

It's from a song which is one of the very earliest I wrote, which I have never performed, and which I doubt I'll ever record. The date was 14th March 1996 in the days when we didn't have a TV and we had four  young children at home. Of course we still have young children at home, and that is because we live in a curious time warp which scientists are trying hard to understand.

Anyway, I went into the library one day and found myself reading headlines in the newspapers about the tragic massacre in a Dunblane school which had happened the day before. The stories I read tore me to bits. It felt so close to home simply because I had children, and I could begin to imagine how the parents of the children must be feeling.  And so I wrote the song to get all those stormy, fragile emotions out of my system, and to try and make a connection with people  who were experiencing a kind of suffering that I hoped I would never have to.

You will probably know that tennis player Andy Murray was one of the children who was in the school at the time all of that happened. Which is one of the most surreal pieces of trivia. He's become one of those tiny minority of people in the world who spend the majority of their lives in the public spotlight. A bit of a legend. I doubt that is any comfort to the parents who lost  children though. Nobody wants to experience their cruel sort of fame.



The line "They were never interested in fifteen minutes of fame" is from my song Fifteen Minutes (unreleased)