Blur’s Alex James reveals he once got kicked out of a church party for using “naked baby Jesus” figurine as ashtray

nme.com:

Blur‘s Alex James has revealed that he once got kicked out of a church party for using a “naked baby Jesus” figurine as an ashtray.In his recent autobiography Over The Rainbow: Tales from an Unexpected Year, released on December 5, James shared the anecdote, via the Metro, which had apparently happened at a Christmas church party in 2023.“I had been smoking in the room with the art and the objects, as usual,” James wrote. “Someone I didn’t know had said, ‘I’m not sure if you’re allowed to smoke in here’.

I’d dutifully picked up a little ashtray on the sideboard where I was leaning and extinguished my cigarette.”He continued: “Sadly, unlike some staterooms, not everything in this one was actually an ashtray.”“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.” Unfortunately, James then accidentally broke the figurine.“When I was alerted to what I’d done by the person who’d asked me to stop smoking, I tried to put a positive spin on it,” James wrote. “I 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.”“I managed to wedge it back on,” he clarified.Elsewhere in the book, James shared that he turned to farming during the Britpop band’s hiatus in the 2000s.