Simon Pegg has released an autobiography entitled Nerd Do Well (click to view and buy via Amazon UK) which features Coldplay's Chris Martin. Read the excerpt from the book after the jump. The full book is well worth the read, and is available in the British Isles now. It will be available from Amazon US & Europe from November. You can discuss the book at the Coldplay forum now [thanks mimixxx]
In 2001, the then fairly fledging indie outfit Coldplay performed a small acoustic gig in the corner (of the Shepherds pub) one evening and raised £300 for the Whittington Hospital baby unit. I had become friends with singer Chris Martin a year or so before through my new girlfriend Maureen, who worked as a publicist for Sony Music. I had accompanied her to a showcase gig at the Millennium Dome, where she was presiding over press duties for the band Toploader who were headlining the event. Coldplay were on the bill, and after the show, Chris sidled up and expressed an affection for the sketch show Big Train, in which I had appeared in 1998. This pleased me enormously since I had already bought the band's first album, Parachutes, and seen them perform a set on the indie stage at the V festival earlier that year...
I liked Chris immediately. He was friendly, funny and infuriatingly self-effacing, something he remains to this day, despite his band's phenomenal success. He invited Maureen and me to the closing gig of their tour at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, which we gladly attended. At the after show party, I escorted Chris to a near by cash machine where he admitted he had just wanted to take a breath from all the attention he was getting at the party. It's funny in light of what was about to happen to think of Chris struggling with the notion of success at such an early stage in his career. Parachutes had done well both critically and in terms of sales, but the band was only a promising proposition at this point and a somewhat unlikely candidate for global domination.
That night Chris came back to our Highgate home and watched This Is Spinal Tap with Maureen and me, cementing what was to become a lasting friendship. Chris began to join us at the pub, which delighted Bernie no end, since the band's rise was meteoric from this point. Their second album, AROBTTH, debuted on the Shepherd's jukebox two weeks before it was released into the world, and to this day, Bernie and her family feature regularly on Coldplay guest lists.
Picture of Simon Pegg joining Coldplay on stage at London's O2 Arena back in December 2008:
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