The Questionnaire: Andrew London

What are you plugging right now?

My new Andrew London Trio album Let’s Take Offence. There are songs about technology, political correctness, people who talk at concerts, Lycra-clad cyclists and the hardships of working on cruise ships. To support the album we’re touring the entire country during October under the auspices of Arts on Tour NZ, playing about 25 gigs from Coromandel to Gore.

What’s your idea of perfect happiness?

teenage kids.

Ever stolen anything?

Some of Paul McCartney’s chord progressions. Obviously, I’m not going to confess which ones they are. Mind you, I’m pretty sure he stole a few from George Gershwin and Cole Porter, who probably stole them from somebody else.

If you could time-travel, where would you go and why?

No thanks. I have had an incredibly privileged and fortunate life and wouldn’t put any of it at risk by courting supernatural interference. Those genies always have a secret agenda in the Arabian Nights and it often turns out badly for the lamprubber.

What gets your back up?

Plastic. Bags, bottles and wrapping. I’ve been working occasionally on cruise ships over the last couple of years. Some beaches in Indonesia are just covered in it and not even the locals seem to want to pick it up. Can we make a start please? Oh, and Donald Trump and his Republican enablers. I’ve just read a book about the Jonestown Massacre, and Jim Jones’s personality traits, rhetoric and crowd manipulation techniques (constant lying, exaggeration, selfaggrandisement, paranoia etc) are frighteningly similar to those on show by the current POTUS.

Do you have any bad habits that you would care to admit to?