Roses

RED Roses England rugby ace Ellie Kildunne is getting her own Barbie. 

The Sun can reveal that this week bosses at Mattel will announce the doll which is the first time they have ever released a rugby Barbie. 

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It comes after the brand released a Barbie careers range which included a string of sporty dolls including a football Barbie, a gymnast Barbie and a Tennis player Barbie. 

The new doll will feature a brand new Barbie body with a more athletic torso, visibly defined arms, and legs and back muscles. 

A source said: “This is a massive moment for women’s sport.  

“The Red Roses are such powerful and positive role models and the new Barbies reflect this with their athletic builds and muscle definition – a far cry from the ridiculous hourglass figures of Barbies gone by.” 

Ellie said: “We are showing the next generation of girls that you can do anything, that being strong and fast is powerful, and that you can break boundaries. 

“I thought nothing could come close to the feeling of lifting that trophy but having my own one-of-a-kind Barbie doll is a very close second! 

“She looks just like me, down to her curls, her custom boots and her Red Roses Barbie ball.  

“Now I just need to teach her how to lasso and see if she can score a few tries!” 

The Red Roses turned their World Cup dream into reality as they blew away Canada 33-10.

In front of a world record crowd of nearly 82,000, John Mitchell’s side showed why they have now won 33 straight games since their heartbreak in Auckland four years ago.

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Liv Tchine’s first impression was “wow”.

Her second was “can I stay here forever?”.

Her third was “one day this will be all ours”.

Netball’s kingdom is modest, but prolific England goal shooter Tchine and her team-mates recently had a glimpse of a top-tier sporting promised land.

These are the Roses players targeting Commonwealth Games gold at Glasgow 2026 and World Cup glory in 2027.

They are at the vanguard of the sport’s professional era, the elite of the three million people who play netball in England at least once a year. Most players are women, but men play too.

Tchine and co draw inspiration from the Euros-winning Lionesses and World Cup-winning Red Roses, rather than lament encroachment on netball’s legacy territory.

Netball Super League is newly professional but funds are tight, similar to football’s Women’s Super League in the mid-2010s.

Players hear of rewards that could be theirs one day. Often those rewards feel a million miles away, yet not always.

For Tchine, a standout in the London Pulse side who swept to their first Super League title this year, the “wow” moment came at the Lionesses’ luxury hangout.

St George’s Park lies in Derbyshire countryside, tucked out of sight. An understated private drive off a hedge-lined B road is a portal to a world beyond the dreams of most sportspeople.

“Just imagine netball having this kind of facility. Do you know how sick that would be?”

That was Tchine on an Instagram video diary, reacting to visiting the Football Association’s state-of-the-art national team training centre for the first time. The gym, the recovery rooms, the green, green grass of England’s home.

England’s netballers spent a training block there, before autumn series against Jamaica and New Zealand.

“I was like, if we could just stay here forever, I would happily move,” Tchine tells BBC Sport.

“So, so good. We were there for 10 days. The facilities were, honestly, so amazing.

“The whole time we were there I was just like, one day netball could definitely have something like this.”

The second season since Super League’s relaunch is coming, with 2026 fixtures announced this week., external

Pulse are in “the best position we’ve ever been in”, Tchine says.

The league is growing. Average attendances climbed by 42% in 2025, having been about 1,500 previously. In comparison, the first Women’s Super League football season – following a 2014 reboot – had average crowds of 728 (from 562 in 2013).

Women’s football crowds in the tens of thousands are now almost commonplace, but that didn’t happen overnight.

Tchine, a 24-year-old south Londoner, admired portraits of England footballers – men and women – lining St George’s Park’s corridors.

“I definitely hope that if I’m still playing in 10 years we’ll be at the same level as the Lionesses and the Red Roses,” she says.

“They were both absolutely incredible this summer – going out there, doing their job and coming out with wins was amazing. It’s really good to see women’s sport hitting levels that it’s never been at in the past.

“I want to be able to go out with the Roses and use that momentum to try and get our gold medal.”

Morning training would start early.

If any of Waterman’s young players weren’t on the touchline by 6:30am, the gate would shut and she would exclude any latecomers from the session.

“I lived in Gloucester, so I would travel to Hartpury and get all the equipment out before each session,” she said.

“I said to the girls if I can be here and be ready for you on time – you only have to walk 200 metres to get here.

“I was pretty strict with them, but for good reason – if you turned up to an England session late, you wouldn’t be training and you wouldn’t be selected.

“I would much rather they learn their lessons with me in that safe environment.

“Living that far away from home at that age, they needed a coach, a mentor, various elements of being a psychologist, a bit of a mum in some ways.

“I was called ‘Mummy Nolli’ quite a lot! There was a bit of a running joke that not many could come out of a meeting with me, without having had a little bit of a cry.

“I think I was just that consistent and constant person that they could come to and talk to about anything.”

It was serious. But, inevitably, it was also silly.

Waterman remembers one player having their possessions covered in cling film. Another had their legs turn orange when one of her team-mates swapped massage oil for fake tan.

“It was the best time of my life,” says Jones. “It was such an important time, it set us up for now.”

Waterman reluctantly left after three years in the role, struggling to balance being a player and a teacher.

Nine months later, she scored the opening try in England’s 21-9 win over Canada in the World Cup final.

In nine days time, she hopes to see her former charges become the first England team to win the title since then.

“They deserve everything that comes their way because they are not just incredibly talented rugby players, but more so because they are brilliant women,” said Waterman.

“They are exactly who I want my son, along with so many young girls and daughters across the country, to be looking up to. They are mega.”

Whether or not Waterman’s former pupils end up posing with the trophy on 27 September, it won’t be the image that means most to her however.

“They are at an age now where some are having had children or are getting married and I see the photographs – and, years on, there is always a photograph of them with their friends from Hartpury,” she says.

“The lifelong friendships that they all have are so special. To me, that is one of the biggest and most precious things I’ve taken from my time coaching them – my friendship with them, but also the friendships and fun that they have still together.”

You can find out more about Hartpury’s influence on the Red Roses on a special report to be broadcast by BBC Bristol on Friday, 26 September.

Guitar ace Slash rose to prominence with an unmistakable look as the anchor of Guns N’ Roses. A true rock ’n’ roll persona, the artist was once rarely seen without a drooping cigarette and a top hat, the latter of which could barely contain his face-engulfing curly hair.

Now, as of this week, he’s a theme park character at Universal Studios Hollywood.

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Slash, or, rather, a skeletal facsimile of him played by an actor, will be available for photo opportunities and meet and greets at Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, which runs most evenings through Nov. 2. For the musician, born Saul Hudson, it’s a dream fulfilled. A lifelong devotee of theme parks and coasters, Slash has been closely aligned with Halloween Horror Nights since 2014, when he first began scoring music for its haunted houses.

And the character, he says, was partly his idea.

“I went to them and said, ‘Hey, can we have one of those stilt walkers?’” says Slash, referring to the larger-than-life lurkers who haunt guests during the festivities. “That would be really cool. So they came up with one and he looks pretty menacing.”

Slash enjoys the idea of being a towering, sometimes intimidating presence. That’s clear when he’s on stage as the attention-demanding cornerstone of numerous bands. And he likes to scare, as evidenced by his own horror-focused film production company, BerserkerGang. But get Slash one-on-one, and he really just wants to geek out on his favorite theme park rides.

Universal Studios has released a second vinyl compilation of music Slash has composed for Halloween Horror Nights over the years.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

We talked to Slash about a week before Halloween Horror Nights opened from Orlando, Fla., where he was holed up recording an album with his band the Conspirators. That work, he says, will be released in 2027 due to planned 2026 touring obligations with Guns N’ Roses. He lamented that he wouldn’t have time to visit Walt Disney World and Universal’s new Epic Universe. The latter Florida park is home to a monsters-themed land that Slash said he was eager to see.

His love of theme parks runs deep, and is, of course, nonpartisan.

“I’m a real Disney head,” he says, joking that such a declaration may not make his Universal partners happy. He says he first visited Disneyland in the early 1970s. “I really can’t put into words what makes it so magical, but there is a definite thing there that you feel when you’re actually there. I’ve loved it since I was a little kid.”

“But I love theme parks in general,” he continues. “I love roller coasters. I love that carnival energy going on. I love arcades. I love everything about that festive outdoor thing, and I’ve never grown out of it.”

Arguably, he’s grown into it.

Halloween season means it’s time for Universa’s Halloween Horror Nights, which runs through early November at the theme park.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

Slash has a deep fascination with Universal Studios, made clear by his knowledge of how the park’s backlot tram trek — officially designated as the World-Famous Studio Tour — has shifted over the years. And as a lifelong horror fan who speaks nostalgically of watching 1970s films such as “The Wicker Man,” “The Omen” and “The Exorcist” with his parents, Halloween Horror Nights is especially dear to Slash’s heart.

Slash was first drawn to the event in 2013 due to a haunted house themed around the music and images of Black Sabbath. The artist was given a tour of Horror Nights by John Murdy, who has long overseen the West Coast edition of the festivities.

“I was so blown away,” Slash says. “I was elated. I remember physically making giddy sounds. The whole thing, from the stilt walkers to the invisible bush figures who would hide in the bushes and were camouflaged, it was unbelievable. I wanted to be involved.”

Murdy was open to the idea. “The first time I walked into his personal recording studio, the first thing I noticed was a huge print of ‘Bride of Frankenstein,’ our 1935 classic, hanging on the wall. And I was like, ‘Oh, we have something in common.’”

Halloween Horror Nights is filled with haunted houses and scare actors.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

Slash would go on to write the music for six Halloween Horror Nights houses centered around Universal’s classic monster characters. This year, he’s returned to Horror Nights with a score set to a relaunch of an original, Depression-era set maze, “Scarecrow.” Musically, it’s a departure for the artist. “Scarecrow” includes a Slash-composed cover of traditional folk number “O Death.”

“We started talking ‘Scarecrow,’ and as pure coincidence, he said, ‘Oh, I just learned the banjo and the dobro,’” Murdy says. “He was learning all these traditional Appalachian instruments, and I said, ‘That’s awesome because my house is set in the Dust Bowl.’”

That Slash has been dipping into more Americana-influenced music isn’t a complete surprise. His 2024 solo effort, “Orgy of the Damned,” leans blues for instance, including a blistering, rootsy take on early Fleetwood Mac rocker “Oh Well” with country star Chris Stapleton. Selections from Slash’s Halloween Horror Nights work, minus the new “Scarecrow” music, will again be available on a limited-run vinyl sold at Universal Studios during Halloween Horror Nights.

Slash is featured this year as a “character” at Halloween Horror Nights, a skeletal, stilt-walking interpretation of the artist.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

“As soon as they gave me the concept, my brain went into that realm — I could pull out my pedal steel, and do an Americana-type approach, as opposed to the goth, kind of pseudo-metal thing I was doing for all the Universal Monsters,” Slash says.

Slash has become such a Halloween Horror Nights fixture that this year will feature a bar centered around the artist, one complete with a mini top hat as a dessert. When asked how he feels to be immortalized as a sculpted sponge cake with coconut lime mousse, he doesn’t flinch.

“I wish I could explain in words how much I love that kind of stuff,” Slash says.

He is, after all, a theme park regular, although his favorite rides are found a few miles from Universal Studios in Anaheim. “I love the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. That and Pirates of the Caribbean will always be my two favorite rides,” he says. “The attention to detail and the creative element and everything that is going on with those old Disney rides is still, to this day, second to none.”

The mark of any true theme park aficionado is an appreciation of slow-moving, old-school dark rides, attractions that are set in darkened show buildings and often filled with an assortment of vignettes. Slash singles out Universal’s “The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash” as another highlight.

“I went with my stepdaughter and we went on that ride and it’s great,” Slash says. “The ‘Pets’ one is really sweet. I’m a big animal guy. We love our cats, so that was a lot of fun.”

Crowds lined up to enter “Scarecrow,” a haunted house at Halloween Horror Nights featuing music by Slash.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

And before Slash can finish his next thought, he starts gushing about a recent trip to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where he visited Ferrari World, home to a number of celebrated roller coasters.

“I can talk about this stuff all day,” he says.

Audiences once adored big adult comedies. Jay Roach’s champagne-fizzy “The Roses” is a seductive attempt to lure them back into theaters.

As bright, mean and ambitious as its lead characters, Theo and Ivy Rose (Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman), this resurrection of the ’80s-style R-rated crowd-pleaser is a remake of — or really, an across-the-room nod to — the 1989 hit “The War of the Roses,” which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as divorcees who fight to the death over their fancy chandelier.

Inspired by the venomous novel by Warren Adler, both films are metaphors for building a home and then tearing it down, although the chandelier this time is merely incidental. This snarky, self-aware couple is the type to build themselves a smart house and name its system HAL.

The Roses meet-cute in a posh London restaurant when Theo asks to borrow Ivy’s knife to slash his wrists. He’s a morose architect who aspires to build risky, revolutionary designs. She’s a kooky chef whose signature seasoning is a mix of powdered anchovy and blueberry. In the cocktail of their marriage, he adds the bitterness and she adds the spice, qualities that can be either overbearing or harmonious. Their version of sweet talk is Ivy chirping, “Never leave me — but when you do, kill me on the way out.”

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Brutal humor and obstinacy bind these malcontents together for almost 15 years. Then her career takes off and his flops, upending their equilibrium. Now, they’re battling over who gets custody of their California dream mansion. Twins Hattie and Roy are secondary. (Delaney Quinn and Ollie Robinson play their kids at 10; Hala Finley and Wells Rappaport at 13.)

The script by Tony McNamara (“Poor Things”) unleashes the hilarious spouses to aim insults at each other like explosive corks. (McNamara is so skilled at putting cruel words in Colman’s mouth that he’s already helped win her an Oscar for “The Favourite.”) Theo and Ivy open the film skewering each other at marriage counseling, only to be aghast when the therapist advises them to split up. For a while, they stick together mostly to stick it to her, in defiance of the fact that contempt is the No. 1 indicator of divorce. “In England, we call that repartee,” Theo insists.

You wonder if their jokes keep them from honest communication and then you wonder if Roach, who came to fame as the director of “Austin Powers” and “Meet the Parents,” has ever been afraid of that himself. (For the record, Roach has been married to the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs since 1993 and she here sings two cover songs for the soundtrack, “Happy Together” and “Love Hurts.”)

Mostly, you just enjoy the jokes. Colman, who burst into my awareness in the 2003 TV cringe comedy “Peep Show,” is fantastic throwing jabs around in costume designer PC Williams’ nouveau hipster wardrobe of bold, baggy lines. The actor even does an Ian McKellen impression just because. Yet, the surprise here is Cumberbatch, who seizes his rare opportunity to be flat-out funny, while occasionally rolling over to show Theo’s vulnerable belly. Flirtatiously pouting his lips at Colman, he coos, “How about a three-hour circular argument that goes nowhere?” How about three more Cumberbatch comedies for every awards-baity drama he does?

The story originally satirized materialistic baby boomers stymied by shifting gender roles. Both make interesting time capsules of the traditional man and the liberated woman who revert to smashing fusty china figurines like Neanderthals, although my sticking point with the first movie is that both Roses are too despicable. It’s hard to care about either one once you see how they treat each other’s pets.

But Roach has insightfully made this about people, not societal scapegoats. He and McNamara have changed up nearly everything in this disaster except its vibrations of dread. Since we already know that Theo and Ivy are in for a world of hurt, the film spends much of its running time rewinding to the past to prove how wonderful they could be together — and, more painfully, how sincerely they’ve tried to work out their kinks. We like Cumberbatch and Colman’s Theo and Ivy, even after they’ve become tantrum-throwing twits.

The details of their dissolution — career pressures, childcare clashes, petty jealousies — and its credible tit-for-tat dynamic are discomfitingly relatable. If this version has a larger sociological statement, it’s an indictment of how today’s quest for success is so all-consuming and exhausting that even if you can fit two egos in one house, you probably can’t merge their day planners. In the modern, highly visible, online-viralized game of life, earning money is merely Stage 1. Both Roses are driven to leave their permanent mark on the world.

Meanwhile, their two sets of American friends, Amy and Barry (Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg) and Sally and Rory (Zoë Chao and Jamie Demetriou), are equally miserable and toxic. All four are such shallow snobs that they can’t imagine why Ivy would want to own Julia Child’s old stove when it’s, well, old. McKinnon’s Amy toggles through obnoxious progressive stereotypes: She’s a self-professed empath who pretends to be in an open marriage to wheedle Theo into bed. Barry, a depressive, gives Samberg a chance to show a deeper level of comic maturity, and also eventually doubles as Theo’s personal attorney. Otherwise, the script prunes the couple’s legal battle down to one scene with Ivy’s viperous lawyer, played by Allison Janney, who brings a rottweiler to the showdown and claims it’s her service animal.

The gags can be silly. There are two vomit scenes and a pratfall where Colman lands on her face. Yet, Roach and his team have put serious effort into their lovely symbology: a shot of Theo glumly walking down an airplane aisle from first class to coach, images of the cold Pacific crashing against rocks that recall his confession of feeling “waves of hatred” toward his wife.

When the film finally gets to its Grand Guignol climax, it rushes through the barbarity, taking no delight in it. I wanted to laugh but realized I’d fallen too much in love with Theo and Ivy, who are both so pitifully certain they’re in the moral right. The schadenfreude is just sad. It stings how much we root for them to kiss and make up. Still, despite the hasty ending, this splashy comedy deserves to woo grown-ups back to the multiplex. The Roses are estranged, but they’ve reunited us with our love for a genre — and it feels so good.

To many first-time viewers of this England team, it was a sight to behold.

None of what occurred will be news to head coach John Mitchell, however. He will be looking more closely at the fine detail of his team, rather than Kildunne’s well-known headline-grabbing abilities.

The neat dovetailing of Tatyana Heard and Megan Jones – a centre partnership that combines power, pace and nous – will have been particularly pleasing.

Jones made perhaps the tackle of the match, marching Lotte Sharp at pace and drawing winces from the stands.

Her break, followed by Heard’s quick hands, set up Abby Dow’s score just after half-time.

It is difficult to see veteran Emily Scarratt, who arrived off the bench in the second half, edging her way back into a first-choice pairing any time soon.

Loose-head Hannah Botterman raged around in the loose and stole a prime turnover off the floor, perhaps inspired by the chance to show up United States’ Hope Rogers who was picked in World Rugby’s Team of the Year in her position.

Sadia Kabeya buzzed with energy in the back row, while fly-half Zoe Harrison’s kicking for posts was superb.

With Emma Sing, the squad’s most impressive off the tee, on the bench and the small change potentially crucial in the knockout rounds, it is an area where high standards must be maintained.

The driving maul is still a trump card and the neat off-the-top variation that gave hooker Amy Cokayne her try will have opponents second-guessing themselves afresh.

The scrum was dominant, especially in the early exchanges.

However there is room for improvement.

Some of the intricacies, tip-on passes in midfield particularly, went astray. Better teams will bring more line speed and pressure to bear on those skills.

Jess Breach scored two tries but won’t want to watch the way she was shrugged off by Erica Jarrell-Searcy for the United States’ score.

Claudia Moloney-MacDonald, who missed this match with a minor injury, will be back to put pressure on Breach soon.

England’s forward supremacy told as they powered to victory away to France in their final warm-up match before the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup.

The Red Roses dominated in the maul throughout the match at Stade Guy Boniface, scoring their three first-half tries through forwards Morwenna Talling, Amy Cokayne and Maud Muir.

A moment of quick-thinking extended the lead after half-time. As France gave away a penalty from a scrum and the packs came up, scrum-half Natasha Hunt span the ball to the left and Megan Jones collected to score unopposed.

Replacement hooker Lark Atkin-Davies bowled over for two late tries which added gloss to the scoreline. Both were converted by Zoe Harrison, who kicked well all night – converting five tries and hitting the post with the other effort.

While not a note-perfect performance, it extends England’s winning run against France to 16 successive matches.

And with the Red Roses potentially set to face the French – ranked fourth in the world – in the World Cup semi-finals, it will give further confidence to John Mitchell’s team that they can get their hands on a second title.

More follows.

Zoe Harrison, in competition with Holly Aitchison, has a chance to cement her spot at 10. Lucy Packer, England’s starting nine in their World Cup final defeat by New Zealand three years ago, is trying to unseat Natasha Hunt.

In the front-row, there is Springbok-style strength in depth, with hooker May Campbell, joint-top try scorer in the PWR last season, Hannah Botterman and Maud Muir as the back-up to Kelsey Clifford, Lark Atkin-Davies and Sarah Bern.

There is intrigue on the wing as Jess Breach attempts to edge ahead of Claudia Moloney-McDonald and Helena Rowland, a sublimely skilled footballer still searching for a secure backline spot, and try her hand out wide.

Centre Jade Shekells will attempt to barge into the midfield equation as she wins her third cap. Emma Sing has been excellent for Gloucester-Hartpury, but has the hardest task of all, keeping World Player of the Year Ellie Kildunne’s full-back spot warm.

And in the background, for all of them, is the clock.

The canapes and tickertape have barely been cleared away from football’s celebrations, but a baton has been passed. England will play France next weekend in their final warm-up and then the rehearsals are over.

A Rugby World Cup opener against the United States awaits on 22 August.

Marlie Packer, who captains the side against Spain, is setting her sights high.

She has won the World Cup before.

Back in 2014, England’s women footballers, preparing for a qualifier against Wales, came off the training pitch and sat down to cheer Packer and her team-mates – all amateurs – to a final win over Canada.

This time though a Red Roses victory, on home turf, as professionals, at a sold-out Allianz Stadium, would be many magnitudes bigger.

“It is our turn now, let’s go and do it,” said Packer.

“Like how the footballers have inspired us, we want to inspire them and the nation.

“We can define the way women’s rugby is looked at by the way we play and how we want to be.”

Spain is where England iron out the small details needed to realise that big ambition.

As the manager of Guns N’ Roses during the band’s debauched heyday, Alan Niven has no shortage of colorful stories.

The LAPD fetching Axl Rose from his West Hollywood condo and bringing him directly to the stage so Guns N’ Roses could open for the Rolling Stones at the L.A. Coliseum.

Slash going off script and taking a Winnebago for a joyride — and then standing in rush hour traffic and brandishing a bottle of Jack Daniels — while filming the “Welcome to the Jungle” music video.

Guitarist Izzy Stradlin carrying a $750,000 cashier’s check that Niven had to take from him and hide in his own shoe for safekeeping during a raucous trip to New Orleans.

About 15 minutes into a thoughtful Zoom conversation, the garrulous Niven poses a question of his own: “Why was I managing Guns N’ Roses?”

Given what he describes, it is a good question.

“Because nobody else would do it,” he says, noting that the band’s former management firm “could not get away fast enough” from the group. “No one else would deal with them. Literally, I was not bottom of the barrel, darling — I was underneath the barrel. It was desperation.”

Case in point: his very first Guns N’ Roses band meeting. On the way into the house, Niven says, he passed by a broken toilet and “one of the better-known strippers from [the] Sunset Strip.” Stradlin and Slash were the only ones who’d shown up. Once the meeting started, Stradlin nodded out at the table and Slash fed “a little white bunny rabbit” to a massive pet python.

“And I’m sitting there going, ‘Keep your cool. This may be a test. Just go with it and get through it.’ But that was my first GNR meeting.”

These kinds of stranger-than-fiction anecdotes dominate Niven’s wildly entertaining (and occasionally jaw-dropping) new book, “Sound N’ Fury: Rock N’ Roll Stories.” With brutal honesty and vivid imagery, he describes the challenges of wrangling Guns N’ Roses before and after the band’s 1987 debut, “Appetite for Destruction.” These include mundane business matters (like shooting music videos on a budget) and more stressful moments, such as navigating Rose’s mercurial moods and ensuring that band members didn’t take drugs on international flights.

But “Sound N’ Fury” also focuses extensively on Niven’s time managing the bluesy hard rock band Great White, whose lead singer, the late Jack Russell, had his own struggles with severe addiction. To complicate the entanglement, Niven also produced and co-wrote dozens of the band’s songs, including hits “Rock Me” and “House of Broken Love.”

Niven mixes delightful bits of insider gossip into these harrowing moments: firing for bad behavior future superstar director Michael Bay from filming Great White’s “Call It Rock ’n’ Roll” music video; Berlin’s Terri Nunn sending President Reagan an 8-by-10 photo with a saucy message; clandestinely buying Ozzy Osbourne drinks on an airplane behind Sharon Osbourne’s back.

And his lifelong passion for championing promising artists also comes through, including his recent advocacy for guitarist Chris Buck of Cardinal Black.

Unsurprisingly, Niven says people had been asking him for “decades” to write a book (“If I had $1 for every time somebody asked me that, I’d be living in a castle in Scotland”). He resisted because of his disdain for rock ‘n’ roll books: “To me, they all have the same story arc and only the names change.”

A magazine editor paid him such a huge compliment that he finally felt compelled to write one.

“He said, ‘I wish I could write like you,’ ” Niven says. “When he said that, it put an obligation on me that I couldn’t shake. Now I had to be intelligent about it and go, ‘Well, you hate rock ‘n’ roll books, so what are you going to do?’ ”

Niven’s solution was to eschew the “usual boring, chronological history” and structure “Sound N’ Fury” more like a collection of vignettes, all told with his usual dry sense of humor and razor-sharp wit.

“If you tell the stories well enough, they might be illuminating,” he says. “I saw it more as a record than I did a book. And you hope that somebody will drop the needle in at the beginning of the record and stay with the record until it’s over.

“For me, dialogue was key — and, fortunately, they were all more f— up than I was,” he adds. “So my memory of the dialogue is pretty good. … There’s some dialogue exchanges in there that imprinted themselves for as long as I live.”

One of the artists that doesn’t get much ink in “Sound N’ Fury” is another group known for its hedonistic rock ‘n’ roll behavior, Mötley Crüe.

“The fact that people are still interested in what you’ve got to say about things that happened 30 years ago is almost unimaginable,” Alan Niven says.

(ECW Press)

Niven promoted and facilitated distribution of the independent release of the band’s 1981 debut, “Too Fast for Love” and helped connect Mötley Crüe with Elektra Records. He doesn’t mince words in the book or in conversation about the band, saying he feels “very ambivalent about the small role I played in the progression of Mötley Crüe because I know who they are. I know what they’ve done to various people. I know how they’ve treated certain numbers of women. And I am not proud of contributing to that.

“And on top of that, someone needs to turn around and say, ‘It’s a thin catalog that they produced,’ in terms of what they produced as music,” he continues. “There’s not much there and it’s certainly not intellectually or spiritually illuminating in any way, shape or form. They are brutish entertainers, and that’s it.”

Still, Niven says he didn’t hesitate to include the stories that he did in “Sound N’ Fury,” and by explanation notes a conversation he had with journalist Mick Wall.

“He sent me an email the other day saying, ‘Welcome to the club of authors,’ ” he recalls. “And I’m going, ‘Yeah, right. You’ve been doing it all your life. I’m just an enthusiastic amateur.’ And he said, ‘Welcome to the club — and by the way, it’s cursed.’”

Niven pondered what that meant. “A little light bulb went on in my head, and I went, ‘Ah, yes, the curse is truth,’ because a lot of people don’t want to hear the truth and don’t want to hear what truly happened.

“There are people in the Axl cult who won’t be happy. There will be one or two other people who won’t be happy, but there’s no point in recording anything unless it’s got a truth to it.”

Niven says when the book was done, he didn’t necessarily gain any surprising insights or new perspectives on what he had documented.

“The fact that people are still interested in what you’ve got to say about things that happened 30 years ago is almost unimaginable,” he says. “I never used to do interviews back in the day. But at this point, it would just be graceless and rank bad manners not to respond.

“Occasionally people go, ‘Oh, he’s bitter,’” Niven continues. “No, I am not. I don’t think the book comes off as bitter. Many times I’ve said it was actually a privilege to go through that period of time because I didn’t have to spend my life saying to myself, ‘I wonder what it would have been like to have had a No. 1. To have had a successful band.’ Well, I found out firsthand.”

Niven stresses firmly that management was more than a job to him.

“It was my way of life,” he says. “People who go into management and think it’s a job that starts maybe at about half past 10 in the morning once you’ve had your coffee and then you check out at six, they’re not true managers.

“They’re not in management for the right reasons,” he adds. “Rock ‘n’ roll is a way of f— life. It’s 24/7, 365. And that was my approach to it.”