I always thought it was like those bands where the key member leaves,” he says with a mischievous grin.

Which leads me to my next point that I don't think as a reader you really get to know James, he only briefly lets the reader in to his emotions when he talks of his Mum's struggles with her mental health and her death, the rest of the time it feels like he's putting on a front. He is quite open throughout about his recreational refreshments of choice and some of the comical capers that resulted. Fast forward a few years Brown launched the ‘lad’s’ magazine Loaded featuring everything from top musicians, elite fashion plus world renowned models fronting it’s covers. Today, though, Brown sees it more clearly: “There was not much fun in media before we came along,” he says. He tells me he’s finished his book, the one about the bloke who started Loaded, who went on tour with U2 and was in a ballet with The Fall, who played football with The Cult, drank liquid acid with the Beastie Boys, and discussed the debatable merits of hot or cold lamb over lunch with Michael Caine.It’s not an exaggeration to say that Loaded and it’s subsequent influence not only changed magazines, but helped to redefine British popular culture. Whether that works for you will depend on your enjoyment of seeing how functioning alcoholics can pull their shit together to craft great copy. He embraces the concept of gonzo journalism, like his influences, Hunter S Thompson, Tom Woolfe and Nick Kent. Being told that when you know you’ve got no control over yourself was a real wake-up moment,” he says. and the way it made them feel like they were part of an exclusive gang (even if said gang ran to 300,000-odd readers each month).

But Move on Up by Curtis Mayfield, White Man in Hammersmith Palais by The Clash, and Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division all remain terribly thrilling, no matter how often I hear them. I think James is a good example of the old adage 'make your hobby your job and never work a day in your life'.The sense of peace is a far cry from the mania of the 90s, when Brown was the enfant terrible of UK publishing and founding editor of Loaded, the lads’ mag so notorious that Brown became a celebrity in his own right – a mouthy media presence with a trademark head of curls, fond of bigging himself and his magazine up, and with a reputation for partying hard. I can imagine popular authors get inundated with enquiries but the authors popularity on this social media platform is fledgling. He is the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction Writing and the Nelson Algren Award in Short Fiction. Yet when I think back to the 1990's, the decade that made me and was one of great social and cultural change in this country, I really wish we could. The magazine itself was packed full of the irreverent, half-drunk nonsense that provided many a lunchtime session down the pub, along with some genuinely funny insights.