Congratulations Billy Idol!

Your peroxide hair, your sneer, your cheekbones. You established good looks for a generation, a movement. Your wannabes have long populated the subcultures you helped to established, feebly aping at the combination of cool disregard and respect you managed effortlessly for so many years. But you’ve fallen out of the public eye more of late. Showing up in the Wedding Singer was a big deal for your fans, and really who could blame them? You’ve been off raising kids you fathered with all those weird looking hot chicks we all never got to fuck in the eighties or some shit, leaving those of us who used to rely on you to our own devices.

Today those devices will include taking an entire building full of people hostage until you agree to arrive via plane and play a brief, casual concert for the hostage-takers and the hostages alike, so that everyone can enjoy Billy Idol’s music together one last time before they’re dragged off to jail for the rest of their life or shot in the face, as sometimes happens in hostage situations.

You’ll refuse to do it at first, but then the queen will show up in her queenly hat and ask you really nicely and, since you’re British, you’ll have to go do it. You’ll hop on her helicopter, reminding her of how rusty you are, and she’ll say pish posh or whatever it is that queens say and try to boost your confidence.

It won’t work.

You’ll arrive at the office complex where the hostage situation has developed a nervous wreck, strung out on a lack of sleep, too much coffee and not enough contact with whoever the fuck you spend all your time with these days. You’ll chew your lip, look around nervously and then walk into the office complex, where you’ll be greeted with great accolade, even though you’ll be wearing your dad clothes. The hostage situation will just be so excited to see you, they won’t be able to contain themselves. They’ll give you a microphone and tell you to just have fun, and you’ll do your best, apologizing for how rusty you are.

You’ll start in to Rock the Cradle, doing your best to make an acapela version of it happen, but it’ll come out all wrong and everyone will know it. Still, you’ll soldier through, for England and the lives at stake and just to prove you still got it, pulling off a mediocre performance that leaves everyone feeling a little uncomfortable and more than a little silly that they took a whole bunch of people hostage to see a concert that you really didn’t want to perform.

They’ll apologize to you profusely and surrender to the police unceremoniously, walking out without you. The queen will give you some sort of fancy cross and thank you and all of those fans will realize that, great as you were, you’re older and different now, and they need to stop worshipping you and find their own lives at last. Or, at the very least, take anger management classes so they don’t try to resolve all of their various conflicts using hostage taking anymore.

Congratulations Billy Idol!