Martin Horsfield

Born in Lancashire, a student at Stirling university, and resident in south London since Britpop was a twinkle in Jarvis Cocker's eye, Martin Horsfield bought his first Clash single aged nine (his next was by the Smurfs), was a pirate radio DJ at 14, and had interviewed Oasis, Radiohead and Kylie by the time he was 23. When Glasgow's M8 magazine fully embraced rave, and Bigwig – the studenty indie mag that had offered him a life raft – folded, he concentrated his efforts on trying to get into NME. He eventually became the magazine's chief subeditor, a position he held for five years, somewhat to the detriment of his pop writing because the subs "already had jobs" and were thus not deemed hungry enough to write about the Strokes (indeed, Martin got a dressing down for interviewing Kings of Leon for The Word, just to show he could). He has continued to fail upwards, doing two and a half years as chief subeditor on Time Out, 12 years on the much-missed Guardian Guide, and since 2020, has been production editor on the Guardian's Saturday magazine culture pages. Although his writing on RBP dates from 1990-96, he wants it to be known that he would still drop everything to do a phoner with Charl XCX.