Andrew Harrison

But I think it makes a fair point, which is basically, you know, a handful of people in the kind of music world went mad that you've used a Union Jack.

Within two years, Noel Gallagher's running around with a Union Jack guitar and everybody's saying how brilliant it is.

Oasis are swathing themselves in Union Jack.

Yeah, and Jerry Halliwell's in a Union Jack dress.

Jerry Halliwell's in a Union Jack frock.

Yeah.

As with all things, it's a signifier and it can mean different things at different times.

I don't think, for instance, if this magazine was going now, I don't think we'd do it now because of the associations.

But a large part of this feature was about why can't we pull this stuff away from horrible people?

Also, at the time, you know, the kind of racist Billy Britton thing was at a very low ebb, right?

In fact, we thought foolishly that we'd defeated it forever.

We thought it had gone forever.

We thought we'd beaten it.

you know, how naive that looks now.

But the other thing that really wound people up was we got a fantastic illustration done for the opening spread by a guy called Michael Gillette, who also did illustrations for Elastica and for Saint-Etienne.

And it was the start of Dad's Army, with all the British fans pointing with the arrows.

And the headline was, Who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Cobain?

He hadn't shot himself yet.

He wasn't dead at this point.

There are Kurt Cobain stories I may tell you shortly.