"I don't need to explain what I do or how I do it"

It probably doesn't help matters that I hate 'Brown Eyed Girl' with a passion and have never listened to Astral Weeks, but Van Morrison really does come across as a monumental prick in this interview with the Guardian's Laura Barton - all 16 minutes and 28 seconds of it.

Doing press must be tedious at times (as I've acknowledged previously, in relation to St Vincent's "interview kit"), but journalists are at least entitled to basic courtesy and respect. According to Morrison, Barton asking straightforward uncontentious questions constitutes "a psychiatric examination". I'd hate to see how he behaves in response to someone who isn't a self-confessed superfan - or at least was before meeting him.