We are, you may recall, dealing with the men who wrote Spitting Image's "The Chicken Song"). And here he is waiting to talk about the imminent production of his solo Red Dwarf novel, Last Human But first, let's recap.August 1984. He has, after all, made a living by writing about curry stains and cruddy boxer shorts. Naylor, along with Rob Grant, is revered for Red Dwarf (although we should perhaps consider this as merely atonement for earlier crimes. A moment like this and I look like something the cat dragged in Things can only improve Doug Naylor is unlikely to mind my dishevelled appearance. And at that moment, who should walk in but the very object of my teenage adulation, Clare Grogan. smegging wonderful First, my washing machine packs up. Ditto with my tape recorder minutes before the interview is due to start.
There I am, sitting in a central London production company wearing my most smeggy clothes, panicking over a sick Dictaphone. Brilliant."His sentiments are echoed by Harry Shapiro, Hendrix's biographer and one of the many who initially suggested him "I'm delighted It's brilliant news and utterly, utterly deserved. Hendrix was probably the most brilliant and important musician rock music will ever see."What would Hendrix himself have made of it? One can only speculate that, given the sentiments expressed at the top of this article, he would not have been in the least surprised.The Blue Plaque Guide (Journeyman) £6.50, is available from all good bookshops and from English Heritage postal sales, PO Box 229, Northampton, NN6 9RY (0604 781163). It's saying that, just like people are still blown away by the Messiah 200 years on, so they will be by Jimi's stuff. It wasn't playing guitar with his teeth or setting it on fire or any of that It was the depth of the music, the vision.
No-one else has ever come close to him."He is amused by the idea that Handel will have a plaque next door "That's great. John Lennon will have to wait until the year 2000, Bob Marley until 2001."It's absolutely marvellous," affirms Phil Sutcliffe of Q magazine, rock's monthly bible "He changed lives because of what he did. Dr Harwood suggests that the closest candidate in terms of "comparable esteem" would be Jim Morrison, but he was never resident in Britain. The strict rule that a person must have died 20 years ago or have been born 100 years ago means that there is inevitably some delay in that reflection.The rule, which ensures a cool appraisal of a person's importance, means that few of Hendrix's contemporaries are yet eligible. Understandably, English Heritage is in a self-congratulatory mood."I think it's the most exciting one we've had for a long time," says Elain Harwood, who researched Hendrix's suitability in moments off from her main work as an architectural historian."We've never had a rock musician before, and the only black recipients have been a classical song writer by the name of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Seacole, a half-Jamaican nurse who worked with Florence Nightingale." Black civil rights campaigner Dr Harold Moody will also receive a plaque this year.English Heritage maintains that this reflects historical changes in society, rather than any new emphasis on their part. Indeed, it may be final proof that that revolution will never come. But it is an important cultural marker - especially as Hendrix is also only the third black person to have a plaque erected in their name.
