Freak Like Me: Confessions of a 90s pop groupie

by Malcolm McLean

In nineties small-town Surrey, watching Top of the Pops was Malcolm's only escape from boredom and the bullies at school... until a phone call from a pop star changed his life forever. Before long, he was getting compliments from Beyoncé, hanging out at award ceremonies with Posh Spice's mum and sneaking onto All Saints' tour bus. Freak Like Me is the true story of one teenage pop fan who, with a group of like-minded outcasts, witnesses the disposable music industry of the late nineties and early noughties first-hand. Tracking down A-lister itineraries, he gets to meet the real personalities behind the Smash Hits posters adorning his bedroom walls.
This hilarious memoir is packed with scandalous gossip and poignant memories from the era of Nokia 3310s and dial-up Internet, when chart positions meant everything and, if you wanted to know what your idols were up to off-screen, you had to track them down yourself! PRAISE FOR FREAK LIKE ME "Devoured it ... so, so fun. Brought back so many memories of pop music as an escape as a lonely gay teen. Loved all the insight into how late 90s/00s popstars were with fans." - Conor Behan, DJ (RTÉ 2FM) and Popsessed podcast " Freak Like Me is like slipping into a warm bath of memories of watching my favourite groups on Top of the Pops, Live & Kicking and taping songs off the radio and reading Smash Hits ... I haven t come across any book, TV show or website that has taken me back quite so completely ... reading this book felt a lot like exchanging memories with a friend. McLean strikes exactly the right balance between the good and bad of the 90s, and brings the era back to life just as I remember it. His snarky humour made me snort out loud at times, my heart warmed when he found friends who shared his obsessions, and his anecdotes were so, so relatable ... I would love to see more books like this."- Dr Alice Violett (book blogger) " Freak Like Me has you hooked from the opening chapter ... a laugh out loud, and endearing coming of age novel about a young teen finding himself, coming out and how the celebrities of the 90s helped him figure out and accept who he was. An absolute must-read, for lovers of 90s and early 00s pop music, and those who have ever wondered what it would be like to meet their idols." - Fuzzable "Malcolm's memoir of his time as a teenage superfan around the turn of the millennium offers a fascinating, funny and often unexpected journey through several shifts in pop, as he views the changing world through a life of pop fandom." - CMU (Complete Music Update)

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography

336 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2019

About the author

Malcolm McLean was born in Surrey in 1983, sandwiched between an older and younger sister. He has had an intense lifelong love of music which, as a teenager, provided him with an escape from reality and led to years of obsessively following some of the biggest names in pop music.

When not writing, Malcolm works in university administration. He loves Eurovision, long country walks and reading books about the struggles of modern life. He lives in South East London with his long-suffering architect partner Matt.

Reviews

[Valentín · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for people who grew up in the 90s/00s loving pop music and the charts. Utterly hilarious.

[Gemma Wardle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, but most of all I’ve had a trip down memory lane and remembered all kinds of moments about my own childhood. Anyone who is a 90s kid should read this book, it was a truly wonderful era and will let everyone know exactly what it was growing up in the new technological world. I don’t want to soil it for anyone, but the capers Malcolm and his crew got up to were unbelievable. I wish my formative years had been that fun. An incredible book that is accompanied by the soundtrack of the 90s!

[Amy Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant nostalgic read

[Bethan Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly nostalgic. Malcolm, on first name terms with many of the era’s pop stars, lived the life I could only have dreamed of as a 90s and early 00s pop fan living in a small village in Wales. Some of the doorstepping of celebrities I found an extremely uncomfortable read, but I do think boundaries around this sort of thing have things have changed in today’s world. Frankly I don’t want to be doorstepped without notice by even a friend, let alone a fan (I’ve got loads you see) but I acknowledge it was a very different time. I have ummed and ahhed between 4 and 5 stars for this one, but fuck it, it’s been a fabulous holiday read (not at all influenced by the two large vodka and diet cokes I’ve had by the pool this afternoon).

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! All the memories!
I loved being transported back to the 90’s with Malcom. Great engaging style and a fascinating read!

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this after loving Reach For The Stars last year and hoping it would have a similar vibe. I enjoyed the nostalgia trip of 90s/00s pop but there’s only so many times you can read about an inane celebrity conversation at Gatwick before you start to yawn. I enjoyed the first half much more than the second as I started to feel quite uneasy about how the groupie culture was turning more and more into stalker territory.

I wasn’t expecting to learn anything from this but I’m not sure I could tell you one thing I remember from the book and I only finished it an hour ago (I lost my copy for a month and didn’t realise until I found it by accident which also speaks volumes).

[Coralie Pring · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir of a young teenager called Malcolm growing up in a small UK town, just outside of London, in the 90's. While struggling to fit in at school, Malcolm finds a passion for pop music as an escape from his day to day life. For the chance to catch a glimpse of some of his favourite stars, Malcolm starts spends his evenings hanging outside venues where he knows the celebs will be and blagging free tickets to go to Top of the Pops. He finds his 'tribe' with a group of pop star groupies who also spend their time low key stalking pop stars around London and he slowly becomes more and more integrated into the world of 90's pop stardom - getting calls from the stars to his landline, meeting celebs families and kids, and becoming on first name basis with some of the top acts of the decades.

The book is not just a hilarious account of Malcolm's antics growing up, his escapades and actually very dangerous situations he gets himself into, but it's also a perceptive exposition of the music industry at that time and how they mercilessly used and abused musicians for financial gain. The book is also a blast from the past, recording the mundane daily experiences that I think most people in the 90's also had (some of which - like watching the lottery or 'Big Break' on TV) had tried to forget. Malcolm also bravely details the homophobic bullying that he received growing up in a provincial town, and his own struggles with recognising his sexuality, which I'm sure lots of readers will identify with .

Malcolm's writing style, use of similes and metaphors had me bursting out laughing so often while reading this book. It really made the story come alive and that, together with the crazy antics he got up to, left me always wanting to read more and more! This book is a real page turner and I would recommend not just to those who have an interest in 90's pop but anyone who grew up in the UK at that time.

[Vicki Swift · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It transported me right back to the innocent days of portable CD players and dial-up internet, before social media brought even the biggest stars of the music industry into the palm of our hands. The author chronicles his escapades with everyone from the Spice Girls and Britney Spears to acts whose names I discovered still float about somewhere in the very back of my memory (Tina Cousins, Karen Ramirez, Bus Stop, Precious...). I found myself YouTubing long buried tunes from my teenage years and smiling involuntarily. The charts just don't hold the same magic anymore! I would recommend this book to anyone who loved this era and this music. It was well written, funny and surprisingly heartwarming. Thank you Malcolm McLean!

[Simon McMurdo · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books i've read. Malcolm writes in such an engaging way and flits from one anecdote to the next, each one just as a fascinating as the last. Arguably I enjoyed it so much as I loved the 90s pop era, but who wouldn't want to know what Victoria Beckham (and her mum) was like off the record?

Word of advice: you'll want to have Youtube up and ready when reading; whether it be a song you'd forgotten existed or one of Malcolm's many Top of the Pops stories, I spent just as much time scouring the vaults as I did reading the book.

Through the eyes of a fan, Malcolm speaks to the pop-obsessed teenager in us all and writes from a narrative we can relate to, conjuring up nostalgia and euphoria aplenty.

[Steph Ollman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun read. Well written too! Personally I would have liked more info on boy bands but I appreciate Malcom was a girl band guy!

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been following Malcolm, the author, on social media for a few years now, initially drawn to his hilarious posts about 90s/00s pop culture, which is one of my favourite things to laugh about. So I was looking forward to hearing all about the pop groupie past life he often alluded to! I was very much a child in the time the book is set, so it felt like I was living vicariously through him in parts (it was 6 year old me's dream to go and see Top of the Pops live!) and the gossip about my childhood faves like the Spice Girls and B*Witched was still interesting to me even years on! It's a fun, light-hearted book despite the serious undertones of the homophobia he faced, and it was a pleasure to read. I could read pages more of pop anecdotes!

[Naomi Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartwarming, humourous trip down 90's pop lane. It shows the pleasure and pain of the author and the pop stars alike. Loved the playlist the author has put together.

[Pudsey Recommends · Rating 3 out of 5]

The blurb on the back of the book goes like “In nineties small-town Surrey, watching Top of the Pops was Malcolm's only escape from boredom and the bullies at school ... until a phone call from a pop star changed his life forever. Before long, he was getting compliments from Beyoncé, hanging out at award ceremonies with Posh Spice's mum and sneaking onto All Saints' tour bus.” And this is exactly what you get, and three hundred pages of it.

'Freak Like Me' is light and fun, and very easy to read, though it could be 100 pages shorter. It gets to a point that it starts to feel self-indulgent. It is a great historical record of contemporary pop history, peppered with a few historical markers on gay history, but ultimately, for me, it was as deep as a puddle, or as any of Sugababes or Eternal song lyrics.

[Alison Pashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a trip down memory lane this book was for me!! Standing outside the stage door of the Capitol Theatre in Aberdeen waiting for the stars of the Mizz Roadshow I could only dream of reaching the levels of fandom Malcolm and his pals did! Lots of laugh out loud moments ("911 - the Matalan of boy bands" had me in knots), but also lots of observations about a world of pop that just doesn't exist any more in the days of fast internet and social media.

If you were a 90s teen and/or have a love for pop music then I 100% recommend this. I finished it and immediately made a Spotify playlist featuring all the absolute classics, some long forgotten, the book mentions!

[Laura Angell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made me feel really weird, so much of the behaviour in these accounts feels really inappropriate, and an undeniable display of stalking (the definition being "persistently following someone").
I was confused about whether or not we were supposed to be being impressed by all of the lengths to which Malcolm and his friends were taking to spy on these "celebrities", and how much they were drinking cider on the kerb...
I guess the title acts as a kind of warning, but I certainly felt uneasy after finishing.

[Marc Godfrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst I enjoyed the trip down memory lane this book gave me (I too, was a frequent visitor to the “Top of the Pops” studio), I found this book, sad to say, quite badly written. I get the impression this is the first and only book McLean has written… or probably read.

The writing style is cliche and doesn’t flow. One moment the writing feels like a fourteen year old groupie (as it should), but then suddenly he uses words like “moribund” (multiple times in the book) to describe a pop-group. Who uses that word?? Awkward passages like “[The excitement meant] I knew what it must feel like for a Brazilian nun to meet the pope”. I rolled my eyes at one point, when he actually used the expression “this party was all fur coat and no knickers”. Le yawn.

I’m giving three stars, because whilst the adventures were fun to read, I can’t help feeling the book would have worked better as a fiction, rather than the autobiography of someone I don’t know, or care about. Every time it talked about what he was doing, I found myself getting bored, because *he* wasn’t why I wanted to read the book… It was the nostalgia. And I think this is where the concept for the book misses a trick.

[MISS Ashley Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a North Hants/Surrey kid during the heady days of 90’s/00’s pop this book was right up my street. Not only was it totally heart warming and sad in parts, it was mostly hilarious. Malcolm’s tenaciousness during his pop stalking days is something to be envious of, and the struggles with his sexuality and hideous school bullying, peppered throughout the book were so sad, but his bravery shone through. In my opinion Malcolm let Geri off lightly, I for one, will never forgive her for her treatment of one of the fans who got here where she was! Thank you for delivering so much pleasure, I didn’t want it to end.

[Richard Argyle-Guy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book that really resonates. As a late teen on the late 90’s this book was like stepping back in time

I couldn’t put it down. I love the author’s honesty about the struggles they faced (I faced the same ones) and how they found escapism through music.

A must read for all lovers of late 90’s early 00’s pop!

[Joel Babbington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. A must read for any 90s/00s pop fan. Loved it!

[Lisa San Martín · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly fun and engaging insight into the 90s music scene.

[Laurence · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved this at the start, and was engrossed, but there was a real pitch shift about half way through, and the ending feels really flat. Oh well!

[Joe Stephenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

very easy reading, did think he was a bit of a freak though unfortunately

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had so much fun reading this! Very nostalgic and hilarious stories told. Some eye opening accounts of those celebrities lives too and their relationships with their fans.
One of my favourite books.