A news item from Mojo Issue 42, May 1997
In aid of the War Child charity, on April 6th Brian Eno launched a millenium commemoration calendar - from that date it's 1,000 days to New Year's Day 2000.
Meanwhile the Giant Pulsating Brian has decamped lock, stock and oscillator to St Petersburg for an indefinite period. According to TJI's snitch, who met the maestro on a Metropolitan Line tube train, his reasons are: "I feel like living somewhere else for a while. Since London is now the hippest city in the world, I thought I'd get out for a bit. I live in fear of becoming Dennis Norden or Frank Muir - this is my paranoia. I wouldn't mind being the Rolf Harris of music. I think that's all right. If you live in England and you finally scale the thorny path to celebrity, finally the critics decide, 'Fuck me, he's been around so long I guess we should leave him alone.' You then find you get invited to do every stupid, pathetic thing going - you know, judge this competition, award this, and so on - and I just saw my life turning into a series of small events. I thought I'd go somewhere else where there aren't any small events."
So, nothing to do with the weather then.
Transcriber's note: Dennis Norden & Frank Muir are wits/humorists, certainly "safe" celebrities, for many years script-writers and the mainstay of the BBC Radio 4 series "My Word"; Muir edited one of the Oxford collections of Humour, and Norden presents the ITV blooper show "It'll Be Alright On The Night". Rolf Harris, the musician and artist, has something of an ironic following in some quarters (check out his version of "Stairway to Heaven"), but he also presents the hugely popular, non-ironic and safe "Animal Hospital" series on BBC television. Rolf pioneered the Stylophone, the early synthesizer used by David Bowie in "Space Oddity". Hmm, Eno himself is often referred to as a "musician and artist"... One and the same???