David Bowie: The star looks very different today

SO FAR AS the world knows, David Bowie has been cruising in an enviable holding pattern for at least 10 years: a wealthy rock aristo with a model wife and beautiful downtown Manhattan apartment – and something of a Renaissance man as well, with a prestige portfolio of cultural activities. When he isn’t releasing another album (the next appears on September 15), or appearing in some art-house movie (as Andy Warhol in Basquiat, say), he’s shaking things up on the internet with his online community website, BowieNet, or devising ingenious new ways to market his wares – like the $50m public offer of shares in his songwriting revenues, the so-called "Bowie bonds". That he still has the contours, hair and teeth (albeit cosmetically reconstructed) of a man half his age only underlines the remarkable survival of his creative reputation. Now well into his sixth decade, the man who once played Ziggy Stardust seems to have morphed into a figure even more fanciful: he is the Peter Pan of rock.