Satirists beware. There may not be any room for satire in jazz if the current controversy about Sonny Rollins and the New Yorker Django Gold piece is anything to go by. It seems that the satire must not be “drivel”, as Nicholas Payton has described the ‘Golden’ piece, and must not involve a jazz great or incur the general wrath of the jazz great himself... and his fans. If it's either or transgresses both then there's going to be a lot of moaning. Hurt. Gnashing of teeth. And more!

Somebody, somewhere, must have complained about The Bear Comes Home when it was published in 1998. But then again it wasn't drivel but it did involve some thinly disguised jazz greats and even the boss of a record company not renowned for his sense of humour. You would have thought, even in fiction, dreaming up the notion of a sax kingpin who happened to be a Shakespeare-quoting bear was asking for trouble. Iambic pentameter doesn’t get much of a look-in on the bandstand after all. But “Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you,” as one reviewer put it sagely. SG