Looking back on the glory days of the pop press

Memoir; I’m Not With The Band: A Writer’s Life Lost In Music; By Sylvia Patterson; Sphere Books, €25.50

Sylvia Patterson made the journey from the back end of nowhere to the centre of the pop world in 1980s London Picture: Suki Dhanda
Lily Allen

For its army of young and zealous readers, Smash Hits was a jape-a-page hooley of pop worship. There was nary a lick of snobby snark in the magazine’s pages, although if you knew where to look, you could find arch subtext amid the ‘bleeeuuuughhhs’ and the ‘sniiiiips’.

And for those on the inside track of ...