Blur’s bassist Alex James landed himself in a bit of hot water last Christmas when he extinguished a cigarette on a vintage figurine of the naked baby Jesus in church. The 56-year-old rock star reminisced about the incident from the previous year.
He shared, “I had been smoking in the room with the art and the objects, as usual. Someone I didn’t know had said, ‘I’m not sure if you’re allowed to smoke in here’.”
Continuing, he mentioned his faux pas, “I’d dutifully picked up a little ashtray on the sideboard where I was leaning and extinguished my cigarette. Sadly, unlike some staterooms, not everything in this one was actually an ashtray.”
READ MORE: Blur’s Alex James: Cotswolds cheesemaker says being the bassist in a rock band is easy – parenting five kids is hard
The blunder led to quite the mishap, “I’d happened upon an antique figurine of the naked baby Jesus and stubbed my fag-end out by rubbing it around in his crotch, quite obliviously.”
Dave Rowntree, Graham Coxon, Damon Albarn And Alex James, Of Blur – 1991
(Image: Getty Images)
His attempts to lighten the mood didn’t go over well, as he recalled, “I tried to put a positive spin on it,” and detailed seemingly comical attempts at damage control, “I even picked baby Jesus back up to demonstrate his robustness by tugging one of his little arms. The arm came off along with a plume of impossibly fine, glittering, powdery dust.”
Despite trying to fix it, “I managed to wedge it back on.”
Alex James is well known in the Cotswolds for his Big Feastival festival
(Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Nowadays, James has retired his party lifestyle for farming life in the Cotswolds, surrounded by his large family, reports the Daily Star.
The Parklife hitmaker, who resides with his wife Claire Neates and their five children, has not touched a drop of alcohol since 2002. Opening up about domestic life post-touring, he revealed: “You get home after a tour otherwise,” adding, “You get home and you have to wash up and the kids are like, ‘Dad, stop being a [redacted].'”.