I used to do an interview column called Gavin Haynes's Polite Conversation for Noisey where I would phone up various popstars and ask them about hobnobs, their sexual peccadilloes or the logical positivist turn in philosophy, depending on my mood. 

Amazingly, only Shaggy ever put down the phone. Skepta  put it down but then picked it up again. Skream wanted to put it down, but was so British he couldn't let himself be seen as not good for a ragging, while Sebastien Tellier was so French that he explained how he had to sack his maid for being too booby. 

I am a recovering music journalist. NME nursed me at its baccy-stained teat, back in the heady heady days of Klaxons getting monged on BBC Breakfast. More recently, I enjoyed being bashed-up a bit by an awkward Julian Casablancas, loved-up by The Prodigy (later writing a fond epilogue for Keith), and doing the big career retrospective on Trent Reznor out in his metallic Los Angeles terrordome.  And of course drinking in Zayn Malik's personal pub.