Dear Mr Popstar by Derek & Dave Philpott | #review | @DerekPhilpott

Some time ago, I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing Dear Mr Pop Star, a very funny collection of letters to pop stars and some of the equally funny responses. There is a new revised edition about to hit the shelves, independently published this time, including new content from amongst others, Spandau Ballet, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Blue Oyster Cult, The Stranglers, Fairport Convention, Supertramp. The Hoosiers, The Vapors, Paul Carrack, Wheatus, and The Specials. I’m pleased to reshare my review again today.

From the back of the book

For more than a decade, Derek and Dave, have been writing to pop stars from the 1960s to the 90s to take issue with the lyrics of some of their best-known songs.

But then, to their great surprise, the pop stars started writing back…

Dear Mr Pop Star contains over 100 of Derek and Dave’s greatest hits, including correspondence with Katrina and the Waves, Tears for Fears, Squeeze, The Housemartins, Spandau Ballet, Devo, Deep Purple, Nik Kershaw, T Pau, Human League, Eurythmics, Wang Chung, EMF, Mott the Hoople, Heaven 17, Jesus Jones, Johnny Hates Jazz, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Chesney Hawkes and many, many more.

My Thoughts

Dear Mr Pop Star is such a fun book to read! Derek Philpott and his son Dave took to writing tongue in cheek letters to pop stars taking them to take them to task over some of their lyrics or indeed the band name. (Doctor and the Medics – surely a doctor is a medic?) As you might expect, some were ignored but surprisingly, some of the recipients wrote back! This book is a collection of the letters and replies.

I loved in particular the letters to bands I was a fan of in the 1980s. As I’m sure most of you know, the lyrics from songs you loved in your teenage years stick in the mind and you never really forget them. A song can come on that you’ve never heard for years and you can still happily sing along. So the letter to Spandau Ballet suggesting they were ripped off buying ‘a ticket to the world’ made me laugh. Since the original book was published this letter has now had a reply and what a cracker it is. I could say it is ‘Gold’! I also enjoyed a letter sent to both Eddy Grant and the Scissor Sisters simply saying “Well don’t then!”. I’m sure you can work out what different songs with similar titles that refers to. The response from Henry Priestman to the letter about The Christian’s Hooverville is sheer class, full of vacuum cleaning puns! The reply from EMF (who sang ‘Unbelieveable’) is also excellent. And you must watch out for the letter to The Waitresses about their hit Christmas Wrapping and the subsequent reply – absolutely brilliant!

It was great to see that many of the popstars clearly have a great sense of humour and got on board with the joke in their replies. Dear Mr Pop Star is such an entertaining book to dip in and out of. It would make a great gift for any music lover.

My thanks to the authors for my updated copy of the book. You can order a copy from Amazon – buying links below
A donation to Musicians Against Homelessness will be made for every copy sold.

Amazon UK: Dear Mr Pop Star

Amazon Worldwide: Dear Mr Pop Star

Social media Links

GoodReads: Dear Mr Pop Star

Twitter: @DerekPhilpott

Facebook: The Philpotts