Q – After you performed Little Sister on Jonathon Ross’s show “The Last Resort”, back in the early 90’s, the host made a quip about the late Robert Quine. It went along the lines of “Lloyd Cole, ladies and gentlemen…with Sgt Bilko on lead quitar.” In light of his famous prickliness, did Quine take the joke well?
A – Bob was highly strung, to say the least, but he could USUALLY take it as well as he dished it out… However, on that occasion he was furious. I had to work hard to suppress a smile. Q never did quite get a grasp on British culture, and I think if he’d spent more time there he would have ‘got’ Ross’s humour. I like Ross a lot – his delivery of a joke involving Macca and ‘one knee’, in front of a full celeb audience, was quite sublime.