A Day In The Life Of A Jobbing Songwriter

“I get up at 5:30 most days. I don’t actually want to, it’s just by then I’m so cold lying in last night’s puddle of piss that I have very little option. I stumble to the toilet and shit blood into the bowl, coughing like a tramp while rubbing life back into my shaking legs.

Breakfast is usually Vodka. Or Bacardi. And some fags, can’t forget those – I’d be next to useless without my fags. I smoke near to 300 a day.

I watch early-morning TV in a depressed stupor, dribbling booze onto my pyjama bottoms. I decide there and then that I will not get dressed today – what’s the fucking point?

By the time BBC Breakfast is over, the postman’s been and I see there’s a letter from my agent, Sonny Silverman. A shiver creeps down my spine as I read,

Dear Mr Phillips

Ronan Keating requires a new song by Monday. Get it done.

Yours,

Sonny Silverman
Agent to the stars

My feet feel like lead. I vomit all over the kitchen wall, then go for a lie-down on the living-room sofa. Later, when the headache’s not so bad, I’ll write the fucker his song.

Two hours later I have this:

We’re two hearts
Livin’ in just one mind

I realise I’m writing down an old Phil Collins song. Shit.

What are the elements of a Ronan Keating song? I make this list:

Love
Roller-coasters
Love and Roller-coasters
Coasters

I try to write the Ronan Keating song again, using this list as my reference. It takes a while, but finally I have this:

My love is like a coaster
It protects your table of love
From heat stains caused by mugs
And saucers of biscuits
And stuff

I want to cover your table
With a wicker-work roundel of joy
Please let me protect your wood surface
I’m your heat-resistant boy

Spills are easily transferred
When making tea in a hurry
My protective shield of love for you
Means you need never worry

About ruining your shiny veneer
And going down in price
So please let me sit on your surface
It would probably be quite nice

I decide this piece of shit will do. I fax it over to Sonny, who tells me he’ll pass it on to Ronan’s ‘people’ (whatever the fuck that means). I don’t give the slightest of shits – all I want to do is go to bed and drink myself to sleep watching porno films.

There must be more to life than this?”