A Day In The Life Of Nick Cave

I am sitting in a small estate car, which is tailing a black 1980s Jaguar XJ, in which Nick Cave is pretending to chauffeur Ray Winstone along Brighton seafront, eavesdropping on their conversation via a listening device. They are supposed to be discussing the transformative possibilities offered a rock star as opposed to those offered an actor – Cave has previously expressed the opinion that, unlike an actor, a rock star can never truly remove the mask they have created for themselves, even when offstage – but the conversation seems to have gone slightly off-piste. It has shifted from Cave's early career in Melbourne ("You never wrote a song on the beach? But you're an Australian!" splutters an incredulous Winstone, not perhaps entirely au fait with the oeuvre of the Birthday Party, which was famously light on carefree paeans to the sunkissed sands and bikini-clad lovelies of St Kilda) and has now settled on the unlikely subject of fish and chips. Like so many things, Cave attests, they are of a superior quality in his homeland to those in Britain: "The fish and chips over here are fucking terrible," he complains. This suggestion appears to sting Winstone's sense of national pride. "If the fish and chips are so fuckin' good in Australia," he snaps, "why don't you fuckin' move back there?"

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