Hi Simon,

In my favourite newspaper there was a list of rock & roll's ten biggest hooligangs. Much to my surprise I found you to be one of them. They said that you once threw a TV set out of the window of a hotel room in Germany. Do you remember that incident? If yes, where did that happen and why?

All the best
Kai
Holm-Seppensen, Germany

"Dear Kai,

I'm afraid you are misinformed. It was not a TV set I threw out of the window; it was in fact a TV reporter whom I launched out of a fourth story window room in a converted Palazzo hotel in Italy.

I was doing an interview for one of those Berlusconi - type TV shows; you know the kind Domenica-In, Sabado ... whatever, or suchlike. The interview had not been going particularly well; the interviewer thought he was some kind of '90s Bob Woodward investigative journo, and he'd picked up this story about me having had some Italian tart in my room. She'd done a kiss & tell feature for an slimy gossip rag called Oggetti. Anyway I was a bit pissed off because she'd claimed to have had a wild night of passion with me which was completely untrue. The fact is that after giving her a glass of cheap prosecco, I'd realised what kind of slapper she was, and I turned her out accordingly. It was when the interviewer quoted her story and made a reference to a supposed abnormality pertaining to a very personal part of my anatomy, that I completely lost it and picked up the scrawny little tosser by the rather wide lapels of his leather Versace blazer, and threw him, mic. and all across the room. Imagine, if you can, the horror of everyone in that room, myself included when he sailed first through the net curtains, then crashed through the Italianate Villa style floor to ceiling windows and their casements. There and then, I thought I'd killed him - with every justification I might add.

With the momentum of my action carrying me, I was the first to arrive at the broken window. The scene that awaited me chills my heart as I write. Below me on, a balcony, the interviewer was cowering in the corner, clutching his legs; while a bikini clad, middle-aged female of elephantine proportions was screaming at him in I what I took to be German. Beside her on the balcony was an overturned sun lounger, a torn book and what appeared to be a small Pekinese dog which wasn't moving; the entire tableau covered in broken glass from the shattered window.

I have to say; Peter Rudge management earned his commission that day. The police were not called and the news never made the papers; it cost me millions upon millions of Lire in compensation; I did however, manage to avoid the German ex-Pekinese owner for the rest of our stay; and Duran Duran had to perform a full playback/lip-synched performance on the TV show that weekend.

I've never talked about this before.

yours

Simon Le Bon"