“If you’ve got five seconds the spare, I’ll tell you the story of my life”  – The Smiths ( Half A Person).

It turns out we’re going to need more than five seconds to learn about the life of Morrissey.

Reports abound that the bard of Manchester is at the trimming stage of his autobiography which is due to be published some time in 2012.

He says that the draft version is currently of  epic door stop proportions, a whacking 600 pages which , even with some radical Carver-esque editing,  means that when complete it will amount to much more than a slim volume of glib anecdotes.

The consensus these days is that Morrissey has become a boring old fart whose rent-a-mouth comments for the press have become more than a little tiresome. In this respect, the media shows its usual hypocrisy in inviting quotes about  royalists, conservatives, carnivores or foreigners then feigning outrage (‘big mouth strikes again’) when he obliges with some ‘controversial’  sound bite. It may seem that when Morrissey opens his mouth to the press he puts his foot in it but he knows exactly what he is doing

Dishing the dirt on these critics who have (unsuccessfully) plotted his downfall will doubtless take up a fair amount of space in these memoirs, as he declared in his song ‘The more you ignore me the closer I get : “I bear more grudges than lonely high court judges”.

But apart from snipes and rants what else should we expect?

This would be my dream chapter list :

Chapter 1 –  Born old, sadly wise

  • All about the headmaster rituals at school and the family ties that bind on Maudlin Street

Chapter 2 –  A rented room in Whalley Range

  • Fetishes about girl singers, Oscar Wilde, James Dean and The New York Dolls
  • the day Johnny Marr came for tea

Chapter 3 – I will never marry.

  • Coming clean on his sexuality and on maintaining and/or breaking his vow of celibacy
  • The definitive answer to the question: “Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?”

Chapter 4 – Hairdresser on fire

  • A chapter devoted solely to grooming tips.

Chapter 5 – Meat is murder.

  • His life as a veggie

Chapter 6 –  Bengali in platforms

  • ‘Why I am not a racist’

Chapter 7  America -you know where you can shove your hamburger.

  • My life in LA

Chapter 8 – A working class hero

  • Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

I don’t honestly expect the content to be anything like this but I do look forward to a lively read just the same.

Mozza is, after all these years still something of an enigma and he has been careful to preserve an aura of mystery.

Author, Douglas Coupland once wrote that you could interview the man for a thousand years and still learn nothing so I have a sneaking feeling that even after reading 600 pages we will still be asking ‘who exactly is Morrissey?’

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