I doubt it’s news to anyone that Sting is an insufferable twat, but Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times had the point hammered home in a recent interview that The Guardian has snarkily whittled down to its most abhorrently pretentious bits, which I am more than happy to share with you now:

“Ask Sting about the 19th-century aluminum double bass he keeps near his bookshelves,” we learn, “and he will say he uses it to play ‘one little piece of Purcell every day and that’s it’.” Other exquisite decor details? “Mention the two chess sets he keeps on his coffee table and he’ll tell you about the matches he played against the grandmaster Garry Kasparov. (‘Of course he beat me every time. But you know, he can’t sing.’)”

I try to block things like this out of my head when I listen to Reggatta De Blanc.