Music also features heavily, from the time Sir Paul McCartney made him a cheese sandwich after a soundcheck at the Hammersmith Apollo, through to being friends with David Bowie from the 80s.
“He was very inquisitive. He used to call me Smithy. He used say, ‘Smithy, why have you got that book? What’s that there?’ He was a very curious man.”
And things came full circle when Sir Paul was commissioned to design a T-shirt to accompany Bowie’s final album Black Star.
“I had a hint he was ill because he was in Switzerland a lot,” he reveals. “So, we lost him for a while.”
For those who heard Sir Paul Smith on Desert Island Discs in 1992 it may be a surprise that he has written a book at all.
When asked to pick his book, he told presenter Sue Lawley: “I have to admit that I’m not a reader at all, because I’ve got this very, very busy mind and it just leaps around all the time and I just can’t hold a book for any length of time.”
He opted for the 1974 Beano Annual, because it had “16 pages of Roger the Dodger”.
In Threads, he explains that he is dyslexic and it was undiagnosed throughout his school days.
“It hasn’t impacted me at all. I just can’t read very well,” he explains. “So when I do talks, which I do quite a lot, I just do it out of my head and hope it sounds all right.”
