Mike Nicholls has been a professional rock journalist and writer about prominent music industry figures since punk first spread to Manchester in the late 1970s.

Already a full-on rock fan of everyone from The Beatles to Bob Dylan, Mike quickly became part of the new punk scene, regularly reviewing bands such as Buzzcocks, John Cooper-Clarke and Joy Division, first for the local press and then as northern correspondent for Record Mirror.

As one of only a few national music papers, hundreds of thousands of fans read Record Mirror every week.

Mike soon moved to London as a Record Mirror staff member, interviewing heroes past and present from Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and The Clash to John Lydon and The Jam. He toured with The Rolling Stones and The Clash and hung out with every major music figure from Blondie to Bowie.

He wrote his first book about The Jam, About The Young Idea, in the early 1980s, a few decades before his autobiography My Life With Rock N’ Roll People (Ghostwriter Books), an A to Z memoir of his 100 favourite stars interviewed during his 40-year career.

In between came contributions to the tabloids before writing more serious features for The Times, Daily Telegraph and London’s Evening Standard. These ranged from interviews with old friends such as Bob Geldof and Kate Bush to stories about the music industry fuelled by a stint at a record company courtesy of another old pal, Mick Ronson, the legendary guitarist from David Bowie’s Spiders From Mars era.

A music column for celebrity magazine Hello paved the way for more in-depth ‘rock star at home’ interviews for The Sunday Times years before reality TV hit the airwaves.

These days he has turned his attention to authors, new filmmakers and poets such as Will Self, Oliver Murray and Mike Garry, while also meeting and engaging with surviving rock legends all over again.