Working my way back to Australia after a long exile in the US, I stop off in London the day poor David Bowie’s death hits the headlines. In the 1970s I bounced around to Bowie as enthusiastically as any other baggy-trousered, platform-shoed teen. But if you’d been in a coma for the last three decades you’d be forgiven for assuming, from the acres of newsprint and oceans of tears his untimely demise has engendered, that this was a man who’d distinguished himself in a more exacting field than the recording of catchy but (let’s be honest) nonsensical pop songs.