We assemble in the reception, and I am rather disappointed to note that there is no welcoming party for their new budding superstar. The disappointment becomes alarm when a bod from business affairs appears looking flustered and mutters something about not expecting us that day and then proceeds to check whether there is anybody in the office who knows anything about it, never mind someone in authority. At this precise moment, the heavens open and I start hoping that the taxi we arrived in is still outside to take me home.(And have I still got the receipt for these stupidly expensive pants I should never have bought?) Maybe they’ve changed their mind, maybe it’s the pixie coat with the little deer on that I’m wearing, or god forbid, maybe someone played them that demo tape I made when I was 16. (So, I rhymed changed with rearranged, doesn’t everybody at some point in their songwriting career?)

But things are looking up. Five minutes later, just as Mr Um and Aaah appears in reception, so does a cursing, booming voice that can only belong to Mr.King, who charges in, not on a white steed as such, but clutching his golf clubs and a face of thunder.

‘F**king hell, I haven’t missed it have I? It’s pissing down outside, bloody cab took an age to arrive and......well, well, here I am. It’s not too late to say no, kid.’ 

I can see Mr Um and Aaah mouthing ‘who the f**k is this??’ to bod from business affairs. I do the introductions and we head upstairs. With the golf clubs.

Lucifer is waiting for us, and maybe because it’s a Friday, or maybe he’s trying to reclaim his cool youth  (that I have since learnt never existed), but he’s wearing some kind of linen kaftan shirt thing, and I can’t help but think someone should tell him the colour cream does nothing for his already rather impressive frame. He launches into his spiel, (the one they do when you’re not yet massively unrecouped), and I take it all in willingly. I feel like I alone will be the saviour of the music industry, I will be this generation of management’s Bee Gees, and that all of us in this room must surely feel the gravity and omniescent nature of the moment.

‘Would anyone like a cup of tea or coffee?’ says bod from business affairs. Oh. Tea. Coffee. No champagne. Oh. Well, tea then, I suppose. I try not to look too deflated. It’s gone very dark and grey and thunderous outside, which at the time seems merely like bad luck, but in hindsight reflects accurately what will eventually come to pass.

I get out my pink pen, bought specially for this occasion from my local post office, and sign away. I ask Lucifer to use it too, then the contract will be fully colour coordinated. If only I could say I was putting it on, you know, the kooky crazy artist act and all that. But I, great fool that I am, ignoramus and lamb to the slaughter extraordinaire, am being utterly serious. I have even brought my Polaroid camera with me, and as I write this, I am looking at the photos - and there I am, grinning away, fit to burst, filled with tears of joy. Now I notice a grumpy looking Mr.King in the background, just before he says,

‘Lovely, lovely. Now listen here - you mess with our girl, and we’ll break your fu**king legs.’

This is the first and last time I ever see Lucifer look somewhat startled. I start giggling, thinking it’s an awfully sweet thing to say, and say as much while high on the thought of the big fat cheque that they are about to press into my eager little hand. (The cheque doesn’t actually arrive for a few days, due to the impromptu signing and a slack accounts department. This, and other fiscal fiascoes, is dealt with in “Tiddles”.) Still, everybody in the room but myself looks really quite uncomfortable, and it isn’t long before Lucifer saunters off down the corridor and shuts his office door a little too firmly.

Mr Um and Aaah suggests we sojourn to the bijou little bistro across the road for some champagne, which turns out to be slightly warm and served in plastic cups. I’m feeling a bit cheated, and I think Mr King has sensed this, and so, fuelled by crap champagne and open enmity for employees of major record labels, he embarks on one of his story telling odysseys. He opens with the one about the independent label boss who spent the petty cash, and eventually all the company’s profits, on  the horses, and continues in this mode until he realises that our friend here is not interested in much that doesn’t directly relate to his own burgeoning corporate career. Pausing briefly, he then tells us about the time he met with one of the old bosses of my new record label when it was still in German ownership. I don’t remember all the exact details, but Mr King assumes a remarkably precise accent accompanied by some lovely dramatic hand gestures. Basically, he was in this president’s office on some sort of visit, when the gentleman decided to let him see the rather curious collection of little boxes on the coffee table.

‘And do you know what they were?!’ exclaims Mr.King, ‘They were these exquisite little vaginas! Just wonderful, velvet and lace, and oh, they really were quite amazing. And this German blokey’s going “Andrew! Andrew! Vat do you zink of my little c**ts? Aren’t zey vonderful?!” You’ve  never seen anything like it, I’m telling you. This nutter had boxes and boxes of c**ts. Very odd.’

When he laughs, it’s a ridiculously filthy cackle. When Mr Um and Aaah laughs, it’s almost apologetic, a nervous laugh of a teenager told a joke they don’t fully understand, and if they did, it was still a bit too rude for their rookie ears. (Don’t worry, I shan’t make any more comments about A&R men and ears for a little while. I’m obvious, because unfortunately when it comes to the music business some clichés are true, but I’m not that obvious.) I love it when Mr King is a bit rude, because it’s always good humoured and his bawdiness is more an abiding appreciation of all things female. I think it’s entirely benign (although, I’m not completely sure....), and moreover, he avoids that patronising way some men have of prefacing their jokes with “....now this one might be a bit much for the ladies in the room....”.

In fact, the only joke I have ever told successfully (based on a spoonerism involving Pittsburgh and mammary glands) is from the King arsenal of the lewd and lascivious. If they ever remake  one of the Carry On... films, he should be cast in a Sid James role, though that is to denigrate his own quirky brand of handsome.

Anyway, before this day I had not fully understood how different the reality of the music business is from the fabled music biz of the 1960s and 70s folklore, until I saw the two collide on a pissy October afternoon in a West London wine bar. One, lusty, rambunctious and unafraid of causing offence (in fact, the more commotion the better) and the other - all Prada suited, palm pilot toting, rehabbed, worked-out, market researched non-descriptness. If music industry executives, attempt to live vicariously through their artists, one wonders quite who has inspired Mr Um and Aaah here. Ronan Keating, perhaps? Josh Groban, even? These days it’s getting harder and harder to tell our pop stars from that bloke who works in the bank, and it would follow that the same could be said for those who create them. Perhaps this is the new phenomenon of modern day pop music - we don’t want our pop stars to be fantastic or other worldly, no, we want them to be JUST AS BORING AS WE CIVILIANS ARE. God forbid David Bowie was trying to get signed in the 21st century. Which begs the question, what the f**k does Marilyn Manson’s A&R man look like? Please someone, send me a photo, I want to meet this person. And is it any wonder that Robbie Williams is the biggest male artist in Europe, when not only is he the progeny of, but professionally resembles, a second rate nightclub entertainer? Why do celebrities think that opening their homes to MTV or Hello! and showing us how much like us they are is a good move? In doing so they are merely orchestrating the end of rock and roll as we know it. I for one do not want to see their Philippe Starck (if they have any taste, which is rare) bathroom, resplendent with Aveda bottles and tit tape, and nor do I want to meet their mother in the kitchen.

And don’t the parents of these celebs look downtrodden? Perhaps in the never ending spiral of vicarious living, being a pushy stage mother is good parenting, and those individuals who consider their ten year old’s academic ability of more importance than their freakish Christina Aguilera impression are risking a visit from social services. In years to come, talk shows across the land will have on them failed wannabes blaming their parents for not signing them with a talent agent at birth, and not getting your fifteen-year-old a Jennifer Lopez arse implant will be the equivalent of wilful neglect. The problem is this - of course all the music on the radio is shallow and meaningless, because what on earth is someone whose only experience of life is limited to talent shows and shopping mall beauty pageants going to sing about?

Of course, I was not thinking about this while Mr King was talking about c**ts. I don’t honestly know what I was thinking about, I was on my fifth cup of what was staring to taste suspiciously like Baby Cham at this point. God had given me the sign that I was going to single handedly rescue the pop world and this was just the first step. Had I known that it was going to be uphill all the way from here, I would have probably stuck around anyway, but I might have started saying the word c**t more frequently,with rather more venom and sooner than I had previously. (This reminds me of my good friend Dr.Mike, who took it upon himself to “reclaim the c**t”, as he calls it, and spent a morning walking from home to work repeating the word over and over under his breath in a process of “demystification”, narrowly avoiding using it to greet his first patient of the morning.) When a woman uses the word, especially in America, people stare at you as if the very daughter of Satan has just spoken. Why, if the vast majority of expletives are related to the female anatomy, can I not talk bout my own organs without causing offence? C**t is a good word, and never was one more apt when describing the vast majority of music business executives.

C**t, c**, c**t. It says everything you ever needed to say, doesn’t it? See, Ma, if you’d sent me to stage school like a good mother, I wouldn’t be writing this about all the c**ts I have met in the last few years. But then, I probably wouldn’t be able to read or write at all. I wonder.