Singer James Blunt has recalled how he found inspiration for a new song about his friendship with the late Star Wars actor Carrie Fisher.
Appearing on Friday's Late Late Show, Blunt spoke about living with Fisher, who passed away in 2016, in LA and how she inspired one of the songs on his new album, Who We Used To Be.
"She was the most amazing human being on the planet," he said. "With all her issues and problems, she was so creative. Very magical."
"When she died, it was a terribly sad moment for me and I had been struggling to write a song for her and it’s managed to get on this new album, it’s called Dark Thought.
"I lived with her for years in LA and I thought one morning, `I’m going to go back to her house for inspiration’ and so I drove up the hill and all I found was a For Sale sign . . I had my hand on the gate and tears started coming from my eyes and that’s the song I wrote for her."
He added, "So, I was having a proper blub and this minibus of tourists pulled up outside the house. It was showing celebrity houses around Hollywood, and the tour guide said, `On the left, you’ll see the late, great Carrie Fisher’s house and, as you can see, some fans are still deeply moved by her passing . . . ' She would have enjoyed that moment."
Blunt also said that his hit song Goodbye My Lover was written in Fisher’s bathroom in LA. "She had a piano in her bathroom because that’s what you do in Los Angeles and we didn’t have a decent enough piano in the studio so I used hers," he said.
The singer, who has turned pre-emptive self-effacement into an artform, also joked about why his upcoming world tour doesn’t include any Irish dates.
"I’m going on a tour of the world other than Ireland because the Irish love good music and I haven’t been invited." he said.
"But my very, very first tour was in Ireland. I borrowed my then girlfriend’s mini and stuck a keyboard and a guitar in the back and me and my keyboard player toured around Ireland, playing to five people and I absolutely loved it."
Blunt, who lives in Ibiza, also has a new book coming out called Loosely Based on a Made-up Story, which he describes as a "non-memoir memoir because I can’t remember very much."
"There’s a phrase, everyone has at least one book in them and I should have kept my one inside me," he said.
Watch Friday’s The Late Late Show on the RTÉ Player
