At books.guardian.co.uk books are pared down to about 400 words of paraphrased text so that one can get the gist without having to suffer through actually reading them. God bless this service, because it’s always handy to have opinions of the books being discussed at cocktail parties and book clubs, even if the opinions are not exclusively your own. I mean, who has the time or patience to read Sting’s pretentious memoir, Broken Music? The Guardian’s Digested Read does.

This is not intended to be a straightforward autobiography. Rather it will be like my music: a series of atavistic, yet profound and moving sounds that combine to create something utterly predictable and dull.

I was born in the north-east. My father was a milkman and my mother felt constrained by the routine of their lives.

“Oi, Gordon help your mum with shopping,” my father barked.

“My name’s Sting.”

“Next you’ll be telling us you think you can sing.”

“We are a family cloistered in silence,” I replied smugly.