The decade of our loose continuity connections ended in New York shortly before Bowie’s 60th birthday. It was at a party in a Tribeca hotel. As I arrived I saw Bowie stepping out of a yellow cab and paying the driver. Greeting him and vaguely surprised to see him in this form of transport I asked him if he ever had any problems moving around the city. Not at all, he said, he happily used cabs and subways. “I just carry one of these,” he said, and held up a Greek newspaper. People think: that’s David Bowie, surely? Then they see the Greek newspaper – no, can’t be, just some Greek guy who looks like him.
It was a brilliant idea, I thought. So simple, so efficient – and somehow effortlessly cool and stylish: an act both quotidian and bravura, entirely typical of this fascinating man.