In a column called ‘Soap Box’, subtitled - [LONDON] NEW YORK KILLS ME - in Q Magazine’s August 2009 edition, novelist John Niven speaks about his humiliation during a promotional tour in New York “in both the cocktail bars and at a Morrissey concert”

  - “Say what you will about London, but there is still one area where it can fearlessly lord it over New York; you can pretty much find a boozer in any part of London’s postcodes where a middle-aged man can enjoy a drink without feeling like a bed-ridden, off-day Methuselah…Nowadays, in any bar in Manhattan, it’s permanently like Logan’s Run meets Milan fashion week….Even completely sober I’d catch my reflection in the mirrored wall of some achingly hip bar and think, “Christ, I look deranged.”

Anyway, I though some respite might present itself when we secured guest-list places to see Morrissey at the Bowery Ballroom. It was, I was assured, the hottest ticket in town. (and good to know that I am still childish and insecure enough for such things to continue to please me.) I crossed the velvet rope secure in the knowledge that the tiny venue would be packed with greying Smiths fans and middle-aged industry executives.

I was confronted by a sea of screaming kids – all of whom seemed to have come on board not with Meat is Murder but between You Are The Quarry and Years of Refusal. Good news for the Moz but bad news for me, as I stood there once again rocking my frankly terrifying escaped-paedo-bark-bugs-leaves-bloodied-dildo look.

After the show (and, by the way, the show was terrific. It wasn’t, as my pal Parks always says, the New York Dolls at the Mercer Arts Centre in ’72, but it’d do until someone perfects time travel) a friend slipped us a couple of passes and told us to hang out for the after-party. We hung out. Needless to say Morrissey didn’t. He went back to his hotel. As befits a man of his age, intelligence and dignity. I think I wound up at a teenage strip club/roller-disco/hip-hop jam/urban graffiti contest until the sun came up. I want to grow old gracefully, I really do…” -

Accompanying the piece is a cartoon of the harried-looking author surrounded by all the young dudes in a bar. (I’ve only got a copy, wouldn’t scan well)