PROFILE
It’s been two decades since Alex James swapped life in the back of a tour bus for churning out cheese and cider on a bucolic Cotswolds farm. But as Blur returns to the stage, he tells Kerry Potter why he’ll always be a hedonist at heart
He lives in a house – a very big house – in the country, with 200-acre grounds that he wants to give me a tour of on this warm, spring Friday afternoon. There is a problem, though: Alex James is battling a monstrous hangover. ‘I drank a bottle of tequila with my good mate Damo last night,’ he admits sheepishly, pushing that famously floppy fringe out of his eyes.
Getting hammered is an occupational hazard when you are the bassist in one of the biggest bands of the wildly hedonistic Britpop era – Damo is, of course, Blur’s singer Damon Albarn. The band are about to start rehearsals after reuniting to play two sold-out dates at Wembley Stadium this July, plus a brace of UK warm-up gigs and summer festivals across Europe and Japan. James may be primarily a gentleman farmer, cheese producer and respectable festival promoter these days, but the rock ’n’ roll spirit never truly dies, and the man who once admitted that he spent £1m on Champagne and cocaine in the 1990s knows his way around a hangover. So, fuelled by lashings of coffee and even more Marlboro Golds (‘I’m so sorry, I’m going to have to smoke my head off’), the jovial 54-year-old father-of-five rallies and gets down to business. In a few months’ time, the green and pleasant land of his Cotswolds farm will be opened up to the public for Big Feastival, the annual family-friendly celebration of music and food, now in its 12th year. On the August bank holiday weekend, 25,000 happy campers will watch live turns from indie favourites Everything Everything and 1980s icon Rick Astley, plus DJ sets from Seb Fontaine and er, actor Simon Pegg (‘he comes with his family every year, so I got him to DJ’). The food will be whipped up by the likes of TV chef Asma Khan and two Michelin-starred seafood whizz Nathan Outlaw, with the kids entertained by CBeebies legend Justin Fletcher. Surreally, Barry from EastEnders (played by Shaun Williamson) is doing karaoke. Something for everyone, then. ‘I think the best party is when you have Granny dancing alongside the kids and then Kate Moss turns up,’ grins James. (An old mate, she lives nearby and sometimes does.)
Joined by his elegant, chatty wife Claire, we do the tour. The pair met in the back of a taxi in Soho in 2002, were married within a year and celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary this year – as well as their 20th year on the farm, which they bought while on their honeymoon. ‘I married the woman of my dreams,’ James says, although any anniversary celebration plans are on hold because he now has to wor
