“In addition to performing ‘This Wreckage’ on Top of the Pops I was supposed to be doing ‘I Die You Die’ on the Kenny Everett Christmas Show. It was an excellent and very important show to be on as the ratings were massive. The programme’s director was a man called David Mallet, who also directed many of David Bowie’s videos at the time. After I’d recorded my bit for the show, Mallet told me that Bowie was going to be there the following Thursday and did I want to come along and watch? I turned up a week later, very excited and a little nervous, to watch the great man in action. There was a little side room which I stood at the back of, well out of the way, behind Bob Geldof and Paula Yates, and a reasonable group of other people whom I didn’t recognise. I was very intimidated by the whole thing. I’d only been famous myself for a short time so I was still completely in awe of famous people. Bowie started performing his track and then suddenly everything stopped. A whispered discussion with Mallet followed and then Mallet came over, took me to one side, and said that Bowie had seen me and it would be better if I left. So I was thrown out which, apart from being extremely embarrassing, was really quite sad because I was a huge Bowie fan. Then, a few days after that, I was taken off the Christmas Special as well and I ended up on a normal Kenney Everett show a couple of months later. I was told at the time that Bowie’s hold on Mallet has ensured I was taken off the programme. I was stunned by the whole affair. That a man so huge in stature, practically a living legend, would be so insecure about a new pretender like me was very disappointing. I had expected him to be far above any of that. He seemed so much older than me, so much more at ease with things, firmly established. It surprised me to find out he was just as racked with insecurities as I was, as anybody else.”

Gary Numan, Praying to the Aliens: An Autobiography (1997), pp.99-100