"I am approached by an elderly farmhand who speaks in a whisper. He has James Dean’s signature from 1949, and he is prepared to sell it to me for $3,000. I ask to see it, and out comes a school yearbook with the Dean signature written mid-page in pencil. the man runs off when Markie (Winslow - cousin of James Dean - who grew up with him in the Winslow household) appears, waving something at me.

'Did you write this?' he asks me sternly.

He is holding what unfortunately became an essay written by me in the late 1970's entitled James Dead is Not Dean yet irritatingly printed by a Manchester workshop as James Dean is Not Dead. A dreadful heap of 70s juvenilia, the essay brought me 40 useful pounds when nothing else could, and I had no idea that it would turn into a bookish presentation that would haunt me till...​