Dominic Sandbrook

He was no politician.

He was a media artist himself.

So that was the rock star David Bowie interviewed in Playboy in September 1976.

And the big question, what's going on there?

Did he really mean it?

Was he playing a part, perhaps, as he loved to do in the 1970s, the decade of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane?

And of course, the part he's playing here is the thin white duke who Bowie described as a very Aryan fascist type.

Or was he just completely off his head on coke and speed?

So many questions, Dominic.

But whatever the explanation, the thing is that he was saying quite a lot of things like that in 1975 and 1976.

So here he is being interviewed by the NME in October 1975, where he said what Britain needs is an extreme right front to come up and sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up.

He said the coming of the far right would do something positive, at least to cause a commotion in people.

And they'll either accept dictatorship or get rid of it.

In April 1976, he was telling a press conference that Britain could benefit from a fascist leader.

And then in May 1976, so the following month, came the most notorious incident of all.

When he turned up at Victoria Station in, I think, an open top Mercedes car.

and greeted fans with what was alleged at the time to be a Nazi salute and which Bowie, Elon Musk style, subsequently said had just been a wave.

And then a few weeks later he gives the interview that I've just cited.

And the thing is, Dominic, isn't it, that the genius of Bowie is that he is superb at his chameleon-esque qualities, at finding characters who do reflect the zeitgeist.

Windsor Davis played a sergeant major in a now cancelled BBC sitcom about the British in India.