I once passed up the chance of meeting Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, who - it was announced by his Throbbing Gristle bandmates on Twitter - died in his sleep last night aged 55. In the late 1990s I was invited to interview him and his long-term partner Geoff Rushton aka John Balance at the country house where they recorded their ritual electronic music as Coil, but being a young and inexperienced writer at the time, I got scared off by their reputation as exploratory occultists and opted instead for a phone interview with Rushton. He proved to be a spectacularly charming and fascinating interviewee, and I quickly regretted my cowardice; Rushton died after a fall in 2004, and now that Christopherson has passed away too I will never get the chance to make up for it.