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Def Leppard's Guilty Pleasures

Def Leppard's Guilty Pleasures

Def Leppard's Guilty Pleasures
17 September 2013

The mighty Def Leppard have seen and done it all in their hugely successful career, dealing with triumph and adversity while selling more than 100 million albums and touring the world many times. Their new film Def Leppard Viva! Hysteria captures them playing live at the Hard Rock Hotel earlier this year, featuring the classic album Hysteria in full, together with the rest of the classics.

We caught up singer Joe Elliott and bassist Rick Savage to find out their guilty pleasures: things that you wouldn't expect titans of rock to enjoy. Read on and discover an unexpected love of whodunnits and Swedish pop.

Def Leppard Viva! Hysteria is showing at cinemas across the UK from Thursday 19th September 2013. For booking info please go to www.defleppard.com

(Images: Rex)

Film

Joe: "Porky's...because it's f***ing hilarious, it's just really funny...it's just stupid. I would have said Caddyshack, but Caddyshack's way too good to be a guilty pleasure so, Porkies - just because it's dumb, stupid and it makes me laugh. There's a certain time of day, and a certain amount of alcohol needs to be taken, but it's just a funny film."

TV

Joe: "Supersonic...it was basically an ITV version of Top Of The Pops. It was on about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, you got to see some drastically desperate bands, and the odd clever one like Slade might do it, but then you'd get all these rubbish glam rock bands on that couldn't get on Top Of The Pops. Marc Bolan used to do it, 'cause he was a media whore, and I was a huge T-Rex fan so I didn't care what program he was on! But it was the Mike Mansfield bit on Supersonic, where he used to say 'cue The Balls'...or 'cue Gary Glitter'...it was just totally cheesy."

Rick: "A lot of things were kinda cheesy back then but when you were a teenager you kinda knew it was, but you bought into it anyway."

Music

Rick: "If I had a guilty pleasure musically it would be ABBA. I think ABBA are absolutely brilliant...they've written some of the greatest melodies and songs - and produced some of the greatest songs as well. Listen, Lennon & McCartney were the best, but ABBA always have this sort of...there was this air about them which was a little bit uncool, whether it was the dresses or the flares or whatever, but seriously: great songs. Even the movie Mamma Mia - I just totally bought into it, it's brilliant! (Joe: "apart from Pierce Brosnan - he's s**t!")...yes!..but it didn't seem to matter."

Food

Joe: "Centra sausages and any sort of pork pie! Pukka pies - I didn't realise they were a guilty pleasure - I just thought they were just part of the staple diet of a football fan! As long as they're hot and they've got gravy in them, rockin'."

Book

Rick: "Agatha Christie...because it was all written in the '20s and '30s, it can come across as a little blasé, but when you think about it...excuse the pun...she did actually write the book on the format of the detective whodunnit type thing. It's been so copied, the formula. I've read every single Agatha Christie novel that she ever wrote - I actually own every single one. I've never got three-quarters of the way through without copping who did it - and I was right! - but that's part of the charm as well, knowing when she's trying to lead you up the garden path and sidestepping: "this is the real fact, that you should be paying attention to". If there is such a thing as a guilty pleasure in literature, it would definitely be Agatha Christie."