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It is, today, not the 13th anniversary of the publication of Steven Morrissey’s autobiography (it had been out for ten days) but something much better: the 13th anniversary of the Sunday Times publishing A. A. Gill’s merciless mauling of it—a review which went on to win Hatchet Job of the Year

A. A. Gill was something of a polarising figure himself, but: damn, he could write: “He tells us he ditched “Steve”, his given name, to be known by his portentous unimoniker because — deep reverential breath here — great classical composers only have one name. Mussorgsky, Mozart, Morrissey.”

“We feel very strongly that you belong in this company. You deserve Faber and the love we can give you. History demands it; destiny commands it.” Yes, it seems almost no one in publishing came out of this with their dignity intact

(My favourite bit of that article, though, is Johnny Marr declaring that he, too, has been “offered a book deal, a serious one ... It will be an autobiography, of course – that or my collection of fascinating public bus tickets from the ’80s.”) Anyway, back to Gill, who says:

His account of growing up and going to school in Manchester is “laughably overwrought and overwritten, a litany of retrospective hurt and score-settling that reads like a cross between Madonna and Catherine Cookson”

The very first moment Morrissey even suggested (let alone demanded) that his book be a Penguin Classic should have had Penguin hitting the eject button.