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Musician David Byrne never goes on tour without his fold-up bicycle. His latest project is a book about his experiences on two wheels

‘I’M CHECKING it out – I got it figured out,” sang David Byrne on the Talking Heads song Cities. “There’re good points and bad points – but it all works out.” A gentle description of a city if ever there was one, but back in 1979 Byrne would deliver it with the bug-eyed zeal of a man who is never more freaked out than when confronted with the normal. Thirty years on, the manic streak has gone, replaced by a gentle laugh and shock of white hair, but those lyrics serve well as a template for his latest endeavour, Bicycle Diaries: a series of accounts of Byrne’s experiences travelling to cities around the world.