Waiting for Kate Bush

When Kate Bush came out of nowhere in 1978 with her jaw-droppingly eccentric debut single 'Wuthering Heights', screeching like a banshee, flapping her arms as though trying to take wing, pulling alarming faces, people either adored or loathed her. One of the former was an American underwear model, Lesley Herskovits, who, in spite of his remarkable good looks, reserved his loathing for himself. By the time Kate had taken to keeping her fans waiting literally ages between albums, he'd found himself a boarding house near Kate's birthplace that accommodated only fervent Kate fans. Only his disinclination to miss her eighth album, after waiting more than a decade for it, kept him from leaping off a multi-storey tower block. In Waiting for Kate Bush - an unusual hybrid of satirical novel and music biography - the reader will not only laugh aloud at Herskovits' attempt to make sense of his life in an alien culture, but also learn in detail what Kate Bush - known alternately as "the barmiest bird in pop", "the Pre-Raphaelite nymph with Minnie Mouse's soprano" and "the greatest artist of the last 30 years" - has been up to in the silent decade-plus since the release of her last and best album.