A few years ago, Charlie Burchill and Jim Kerr were interviewed for a BBC documentary about music’s messiest break-ups. Which may seem like an odd booking, given the pair’s famously adamantine bond. B

it’s a funny old world

From Cheshire village halls to LA Babylon, he’s the obsessive music fan who rode the Hammond grooves of The Charlatans through baggy, Britpop and beyond . But how has his band remained together through 37 years of chaos and tragedy as well as triumph? “We had to get used to heaviness,” says Tim Burgess .

As a teenager my life was pretty tumultuous. At 16, I had fallen madly in love with a boy my parents deeply disapproved of, and it was a real tussle for freedom and control. I’d started being naughty

For Tamsin Greig , a Sally Wainwright drama was a pipe dream. Until, she tells Amy Raphael , she joined a punk band and learned to play bass

MARCEL SIEM