Why Supertramp’s Breakfast in America goes beyond cheese

• When I was young, it seemed that life was unbearable. I’ve never paid a therapist to confirm it but I suspect the correlation between my dad leaving when I was nine and the start of a solid decade of implacable self-loathing wasn’t entirely random. My wonderful mother found us a wonderful stepdad who brought us down from the mortality-grey council block into a house of our own, but still, for my entire teenage years, I hid in its box room, my skin blanched forever pale for never seeing sunlight.And when I wasn’t making pathetic attempts on my own life I was plotting less pathetic ones. I changed my name in some fantastical hope it might erase me, make me someone new. But it was still just me, a 12-inch TV, a well-thumbed copy of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, a wired-up slab of the genius of Sir Clive Sinclair and my music – assorted early teen stuff, The Beatles, The Jam, Pink Floyd, ELO.