Best-selling author abuses Hill and hangs up on her

By BRIDGET CARTER

One of the best-known writers in Britain called an abrupt halt to an interview with National Radio's Kim Hill at the weekend, after verbally abusing her.

Tony Parsons, who rose to fame as a music journalist during the 1970s and is the author of the best-selling novel Man and Boy, was being interviewed by the veteran television and radio presenter on Saturday morning when he told her that she had her "head up her arse", then hung up.

Hill said it was the first time anyone had halted an interview with her. "I have no idea what set him off ... It came completely out of left field."

Parsons, who starts a speaking tour of New Zealand tonight, was speaking to Hill from Melbourne.

Listeners said that from the start of the 10-minute interview, he was "rude and abrasive".

The pair got off to a bad start when Hill said he was speaking to her from Sydney and Parsons corrected her.

When they began talking about his book Man and Boy, she asked Parsons how his son was.

He replied, "How is your son?"and told her the book was fiction and not based on his life.

Shortly before the conversation ended, Parsons told her he could not be bothered doing the interview. Hill had asked him how he would interview a difficult subject, and soon after that the telephone line went dead. The radio station cut to music.

Hill said yesterday that she had never interviewed Parsons before, and thought that perhaps he had allowed his "persona" to get away with him.

"It is pretty disconcerting to be told you have your head up your arse, yes."

The British journalist first made a name for himself writing for music weekly NME, interviewing bands such as The Clash and the Sex Pistols.

He and former wife Julie Burchill, herself a famous journalist, have been described as "mapping the NME lifeline to punk rock in its adolescent years".

These days, Parsons is better known as an author and a columnist for the Mirror.

His latest book, The Family Way, is being promoted as an exploration of the "complexities of modern relationships".