MICK JAGGER: EVERYBODY'S LUCIFER Tony Scaduto (David McKay)

There's always a discrepancy between a celebrity's real personality and his public image, and just as often the celebrity's own handling of fame and his sense of himself as a separate entity are even more tangled.

That sort of egocentric snarl is what this book is about.

It may seem obvious, but it does help explain why Mick Jagger has never given an interesting interview in his life. Which in turn helps explain why this biography, for which none of the Stones gave direct interviews, is such an interesting and even vital book.

It�s vital because it provides the most graphic picture yet of the perverse strengths and welcome frailties of a guy on whom we�ve lavished a surfeit of adulatory fantasies for a decade now; the meat of Scaduto�s investigations provides some long-overdue demythicising.