That’s me

I was very excited and hugely surprised a couple of weekends ago when my two ABBA websites (ABBA World and The ABBA Phenomenon) and I were featured in the article ‘How Could We Resist You?’ by Dino Scatena in The Weekend Australian Magazine on 3-4 March.

Dino had emailed me several weeks earlier saying that he’s like to talk to me about ABBA’s Australian tour for an article he was writing to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the tour. We spoke for about 15 minutes, Dino was very enthusiast, telling me that my website had been a great help in researching his article.

A couple of weeks later, I had a call from the photo editor at The Australian, wanting to get a photo of me with some ABBA memorabilia to go with the story. Which surprised me, as I thought I’d just contributed a bit of “colour” to the article. So why a photo?

I had imagined that there might be small head shots of the various people interviewed for the article (including Australian tour promoter Paul Dainty, Swedish tour promoter Thomas Johansson, Björn Ulvaeus, and others who were involved in the tour).

So I was hugely surprised when I saw the article, featuing me in a sidebar, in illustrious company between Frida with tour bodyguard Richard Norton, and ABBA - The Movie director Lasse Hallström.

That weekend I had a flood of text messages and emails from friends and family who had seen the article, offering with all sorts of compliments. The following week I found that someone in my workplace had copied and enlarged the article, and put it up on the wall of the office writing “you never know what your workmates are up to” underneath. Funny stuff!

Here’s that extract from the article.