Mr Charles Jenkins had a birthday at the weekend, and as he is one of the finest pop craftsmen in the country that demands a raised glass and a turn in the Wind Back Wednesday hot tub time machine. In this interview from 2014 we discover how things can go so very wrong when a fanzine writer approaches, why he’s never likely to write a song suggesting “I’m too sexy for my shirt”, and just how much – or how little - he might resemble George Jones, or wish to be Randy Newman. Ch

CHARLES JENKINS When I Was On The Moon (charlesjenkins.bandcamp.com) The idea that songs stripped back to their acoustic essence represent the ultimate test of its writing, a concept beloved back in the day of the Unplugged broadcasts, was only ever partially true. Not least because it was yet another chip on the shoulder of the rockist thinking that said dance/electronic/hip hop wasn’t the real deal or was at best a half-arsed attempt at making “proper” music. You’d swear th

CHARLES JENKINS The Last Polaroid (Silver Stamp) I must confess to being a Charles Jenkins fan. Would listen to him in any form he chose. It’s not bias so much as something like the way I will watch Roger Federer or Johnathon Thurston in anything: there’s something about mastery of the form and technique overlaid with a class that is just pure pleasure which works for me. (And I say this knowing that I will therefore forgive him pronouncing the letter z as zee, so he can rhym