So we (drummer Clare ‘Mooresy’ Moore, bassist Stu ‘Thommo’ Thomas and guitarist Stu ‘Pez’ Perera and I) flew to Perth and stayed in a travelling salesmen’s hotel near the airport. Hookers were everywhere and traces of blow on the control panel of the lift. We made it to the airport again at nine the next morning and caught a small plane for a straight six-hour flight across the Indian Ocean. I read The Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR by an American communist author called Martin Nicolaus. Written in 1975, it follows a line from China and Albania when Stalin was great and there was a military coup after his death led by Khrushchev. Strangely, on the way to the airport we had heard an author of a new book on the Kennedys talking on the radio of the same thing happening in the United States in 1963. I believed it all. 

I also started a book by W. Somerset Maugham called Ashenden. It is an espionage tale featuring an author recruited by the Secret Service. Must have been the inspiration for Jason King.