Screw Loose

First published twenty years ago by Picador, Peter Blazey's audacious, irresistible autobiography Screw Loose will be available in a revised edition with a foreword by the Honourable Michael Kirby. Candid and at times provocative, these self-styled "uncalled-for memoirs" encompass five decades in the life of a controversial Australian journalist, biographer and gay activist.

Blazey always found himself in the hub of political and cultural times. Press Secretary to the Environment Minister in the Whitlam Government, he moved on to London, a witness to punk while living in a Trot squat and street fighting the National Front. In Sydney he was party to the riot that became the first Gay Mardi Gras parade. Blazey frequented Studio 54 in its heyday; became a millionaire wastrel in Barbra Stanwyck's former Hollywood mansion and, in his final years, an inflammatory columnist and troublesome AIDS activist. Blazey was close to the mark when tagging himself "a belligerent old bugger", though in the end, his larrikin spirit was tempered by more poignant insights.

Screw Loose is a unique account of a remarkable life that remains as vivid, incisive and raucously entertaining as when it first appeared in 1997.

Screw Loose sold over 5,000 copies when it came out.

The cover was designed by Phil Day and will feature blurbs by journalist and writer David Marr and writer Frank Moorhouse.